Our Chosen Fate
by ricca
Summary: The wound inflicted by John Connor during the Cyberdyne attack was deep, festering, and the war against Skynet was just starting. Sarah wanted to believe there is no fate but the one she makes, but how could she sustain that faith when everything was spiraling beyond her control? Set in Genisys' immediate aftermath, includes all spoilers.
1. Chapter 1

There was not time to wait for the explosive heat to dissipate. Sarah ran, smoke-burned eyes fixed on Pop's wide back, clutching the thin cloth of her shirt over her nose and mouth. It was as close to hell as she had ever been; steel glowing red and sagging under its own weight, decorative veneers bubbling away as her boots skid on the hot ash that had once been carpet. A hand reached up from behind and steadied her shoulder, Reese was still looking out for her, still doing his damnedest to protect her. Eventually they made it out, boots crunching over broken glass as the cool night breeze of San Francisco washed over blistered skin and scorched clothing. They could not linger long, but she took a moment to breath clean air and shift her shotgun to her better working hand from where is was cradled awkwardly between her elbow and ribs. "Let's go."

Pops marched to a white van, sheltered in the back of the employee parking lot, largely intact despite its proximity to the blast and picked the lock on the driver side door with his newly improved liquid metal fingertip. "Where?"

Sarah waited until he stretched over and released the lock on the passenger side. "Reese, where did your parents live?" She struggled against the weight of her duffle, ignoring the soldier's wordless offer of assistance. She did not need saving from a piece of luggage, and shoved herself onto the padded bench in the front, pressing close to Pop's right elbow.

"Somerset, a few hours east of here." Reese tossed his bag of supplies over the high seat back and slid in beside her, slamming the door shut behind him.

"Seatbelt," Pop's reminder was automatic as he reversed out of the space fast enough to make the tires squeal. "Sarah Connor you are injured."

It was an entirely unnecessary statement. Now that the threat of imminent death had passed, the boring pain above her clavicle was inescapable. "I'll live. We have to get out of here." When he hesitated she raised her voice, "Go!"

* * *

The van accelerated sharply onto the highway ramp heading east. "Your right side is operating at 55% capability. This is not optimal. Kyle Reese-"

"Got it," Kyle ducked under the chest strap of his seat belt and fumbled blindly in the backseat for the white plastic First Aid case in the smaller duffel. He settled it on his thigh and twisted awkwardly to look at the woman sandwiched beside him. Passing streetlamps flickered over her, alternating between bleaching white light and darkness. "Pops, lights." Sirens blared and the three turned to watch the flashing lights drive west in the opposite direction, towards the four pillars of dark smoke. The map light came on once it had faded into the distance.

"Are you waiting for an invitation?" Sarah let her head sag back against the high back of the seat and blew out a breath. "Go ahead."

He had done this a thousand times in a different life. The skin under his fingers was cold and clammy, the right side of her shirt wet and sticky with the terrible, unavoidable smell of blood. It was a mixed blessing that she wasn't wearing a jacket; it made accessing her right shoulder much easier, but she needed to be warm to combat shock. The material slid away from the injured site easily enough, and he frowned at the dark puncture in her trapezius, bleeding sluggishly. "Sarah, look at me." Her eyes fluttered open and found his. "I need you to sit up, can you do that?"

Bright blue eyes narrowed at him and slender fingers dug into his thigh as she hauled herself up and away from her support. "Okay?"

"Yeah," Kyle slipped an arm behind her back, bracing her to check the back of the injured muscle. The skin appeared intact over dark bruising. "Can you turn your head? Move your arm?" She trembled under his hand with the exertion of performing the desired movements, tendons standing starkly in her neck. "Great, okay, you can relax." Gently he eased her back to a restful position.

"She is at 54% operational capability. How is that great?" Pops was watching them with a neutral curiosity.

"Your bedside manner sucks, Pops. Watch the road." Kyle scowled at their driver, who held his gaze a minute longer, to show that he didn't take orders from anyone but Sarah, before returning his unblinking stare to the asphalt. The iron grip on his leg relaxed infinitesimally and he looked down to catch a twitch of Sarah's smile. "I'm going to disinfect and bandage your neck now." There was a small tube of bacitracin in the kit, nestled beside the gauze pads and medical tape. The chemical smell was unfamiliar to Kyle, but the technique hadn't changed between 2017 and 2029 and the ointment spread easily over the trauma site. Sarah didn't flinch from the contact, though her fingers on him tightened briefly, and then gave a reassuring pat as he smoothed the sterile covering into place. "It'll do, just keep to small caliber weaponry for now."

Sarah opened her eyes enough to glare up at Kyle. "You going to stop me, solider?"

"No, ma'am," Kyle couldn't not smile at the self-satisfied smirk his words elicited.

"Good." Sarah shifted and settled down for a nap.

The small strong hand didn't move from where it rested on his leg and Kyle had abso-fucking-lutely no idea what to do about it once he finished stowing the medical supplies. It doesn't mean anything, he reminded himself, not until she explicitly said it did. There was no point torturing himself with adolescent fantasies, especially while her creepy father figure Terminator was driving the car. Kyle shifted, trying to get comfortable in the narrow confines, and watched a red dawn come up over Sacramento. Then he dozed, drifting in and out of awareness, until Pops pulled up to a mini-mart outside of Somerset.

* * *

"Wake up, Sarah Connor."

Blue eye snapped open and Sarah sat up immediately at the command, taking in the changed surroundings at a glance and untangling her fingers from Reese's. "Are we switching?"

"Yes." Pops hoisted his bag onto his shoulder and exited the car. Reese took a moment to double check that the firearms they were carrying were still concealed in the canvas bags, then grabbed the remainders and followed Sarah around the back of the squat brick building to a dumpster and a dark blue pickup truck. "Get in."

Scrambling into the back seat was awkward and uncomfortable, but Sarah managed well enough. It was galling to be exiled from her rightful spot in the front seat beside Pops, but the physics of their situation was undeniable. So she didn't complain and tried to scrunch herself smaller as Reese eased the seat back and slid in front of her. They were quiet except for Reese's occasional instruction, to turn right here or left there, leaving the highway behind to navigate local roads to the home of his parents, and his home in this present-future timeline. The only upside of this position, she decided, was that she could watch his face reflected in the window, watch him stiffen and shut down as they wound through narrow roads shadowed by old oak trees, could watch his mouth move as he recited the message to his younger self, that the future could play out as it had.

Sarah didn't like watching him like this. He had been what she needed last night, since he dropped into her life, really. Funny, gentle, deferential. They worked well together, and it had been unexpectedly comforting to wake up holding his hand. Without bringing love and fate into this, if she had the power to alleviate some of the struggle he was going through now, surely she ought to. She hesitated for a heartbeat and then touched the cool leather covering his shoulder. "Do you want me to talk to him first?"

Reese frowned at her question, using the rear-view mirror to meet her eyes, shook his head once, then nodded. "Yeah."

"You don't remember it?"

"I don't think it works like that," Reese shook his head again and covered her hand briefly with his. "Yeah, talk to him."

Sarah took her hand back and the quiet returned as Pops turned the truck down a quiet country lane and pulled to a stop within easy view of an old tree with a swing on it and a neat two story grey house. The engine stopped and she let Kyle help her out from where she had wedged herself. The grass was soft under her boots as she crossed the lawn to where a white dog stood guard over ginger haired boy and a gleaming red motorbike. He stood to face her as she approached. "Hey, Kyle."

"Hey," He glanced back at her companions, voice high and uncertain. "What are you doing here?"

Sarah followed his glance, over her shoulder at the two men standing awkwardly in wait. "A friend of mine really needs to talk to you, if that's okay."

"I guess so," He offered her a tentative smile.

Green eyes stared out at her from across time, and Sarah cleared her throat and gestured back to the adult Reese, before smiling back at the boy. "Thank you." He nodded as though he understood the gravity of what was about to happen, but that was just fantasy on her part. He couldn't understand, not really, not ever. He would be safe in this timeline, grow into adulthood without ever knowing the pain of losing his family or the terror of being a soldier. She left him by the bike, alone and waiting the approaching adult-Reese, and retreated back to the polite distance of the truck. She tracked his progress across the lawn, watched the soundless interaction, the hulking soldier on his heels and engaging with his younger self.

"Kyle Reese is a good man," Pops intoned, watching the time loop close in front of their eyes.

Sarah glanced at him, and then back at the pair, separated only by time. Unused muscles around her eyes crinkled at the view, it was beautiful to see the threads of the same person running through two separate bodies. "He is."

The pair exchanged the timeless male communique of fist-bump, and Kyle Reese from a future that would never come trekked back to the waiting pair. "So what now?"

The future stretched out, impossibly vast and exciting into the golden morning light. The magnitude, the terrible, wonderful, overwhelming sense of freedom stopped Sarah dead in her tracks. "I can choose, now." She turned to Kyle, and wasn't this a choice, too? Wasn't contrarianism just as restrictive, just as binding as acceptance? He was tall and she had to stretch up to run her fingers down his jaw, but he was accommodating and bent down to her, pressing his gently over hers when she tilted her face up. She could almost feel the possible futures shifting around them, separating and reuniting as one door closed and a thousand more opened. It was her first kiss, and her mouth felt clumsy and awkward and amazing against his, but gravel crunched underfoot, and Reese moved away far too soon. "Please don't say the 'M' word."

Reese glanced between the two of them, confusion writ plain on his face. "What's the 'M' word?"

"Mate? Why? He makes you happy. You will enjoy it." The inhuman, ominous stare seemed to indicate the unspoken 'or else'.

Sarah rolled her eyes in disgust at the old geezer. "Whatever, let's get moving. I want breakfast." Imperiously, she shoved past Reese back to the blue truck and clambered inside. The two men joined her a minute later, an unspoken agreement reached without her participation, and Pops started the engine. The boy was back laboring over his bike, but he looked up long enough to wave them off as the old Chevy rumbled away down the road.

* * *

They found breakfast in a small worn diner just outside the city limits in the lull between breakfast and lunch. Sarah managed to cajole the bored looking waitress on duty into giving them a space in the back by the kitchens, and they were left with menus and dewy glasses of ice water.

The choices on demand were overwhelming for Kyle, who had grown up with the dual options of 'canned beans' or 'protein porridge' twice a day. The descriptions were not much more use, the items listed were outside his area of expertise and he tossed the menu down.

In short order the waitress returned, pen and pad at the ready. "What'll it be?" Kyle gestured emphatically for Sarah to go first.

She caught his eye and quirked a smile. "Pancakes, please."

Pops frowned, but held his peace. "Coffee."

Kyle shrugged, "What she said. Please." He watched the woman bustle off to a window facing into the back of the restaurant and snorted.

"What's so funny?" Sarah narrowed her eyes at him.

"So that's a waitress?" When she nodded, Kyle shook his head in bemusement. "Before he sent me back, John said you'd be working as one of those. It just doesn't make any sense."

Sarah shook her head violently. "No way! That's ridiculous." She turned to Pops, brimming with indignation. "Can you really see me as a waitress?"

"Not as a very good one."

Kyle listened to the tiny family across form him bicker with half an ear. It was a weird profession, how was it optimal for that woman's sole profession to be as a go between for a cook and eaters? For the first time since landing he felt far from home. The world had changed, and there was no going back.

"Hey!"

Fingers clicked close to his nose and Kyle started, blinking away the feeling of alienation and looking down at Sarah. "Huh?"

"Welcome back," She smiled her megawatt smile at him and pointed at the heaping pile of round bread that had been deposited in front of him while he was lost in reflection. "Food's here."

Kyle studied the neat stack in front of him, crowned with a small dollop of gold. The pancakes were soft enough to cut with the side of his fork and they were amazing and sweet.

"Good?" Sarah had drizzled her own stack of pancakes with a heavy brown syrup and was alternating bites of breakfast with sips of Pop's coffee.

"Incredible," Kyle caught an escaping crumb hanging on the edge of his mouth. "People in this time don't know how good they have it."

Sarah's amusement softened into something that verged uncomfortably close to pity. "Your time too, soldier. We'll make sure you get to enjoy some of the perks now that Skynet's gone."

His fork squeaked against the ceramic plate as Kyle chased the remains of his breakfast around. He didn't want her to look at him like that, like he was some victim of circumstance. He had chosen this fate for himself, even more so than she had. Maybe John had nudged him in this direction, but it had all been his free will in the end. "You're sure it's gone?"

"Did you miss the entire building falling down around our ears? Seems pretty gone to me." Sarah tossed her fork down to cross her arms over her chest.

"What do you think?" He directed the question to Pops.

The old Terminator didn't respond immediately. At length he spoke, dragging the words out with effort. "Skynet is smart. We would be foolish to think it had not executed contingency planning in the event its primary data centers were attacked."

"So what, everything we did was for nothing?"

"No!" Kyle disagreed fiercely. "We stopped Judgement Day! We did that, we destroyed the Terminator assigned to protect Skynet. We set Cyberdyne back decades, if they can even fully recover the R&D John was feeding them. It wasn't nothing; it's just not everything." He touched her hand, white knuckled on the unremarkable white china cup.

"So what do we do?"

It hit Kyle again, like a load of bricks, that the young woman in front of him wasn't a soldier, a commander the way her son, their son, would be. She was brave and strong and smart, but it was the intelligence of a solo operative, a guerrilla fighter alone in the wild. She didn't know strategic thinking, not yet. "In 2029, Skynet has control centers stationed through the Eastern and Western seaboards. I have the locations; we can see if anything's set up there."

Pops nodded, "Denver, Colorado is a critical location. It is not far."

Sarah drained the last of Pop's coffee. "Tell me about it."

He had done aerial patrols there, once or twice, and been closely involved in orchestrating the attack that had won them the war against the machines. Kyle knew it well enough. "It's deep in the Rockies, nearly a half mile of granite protecting it. It was Skynet's command and control center, though my understanding was that Skynet had taken it over as a part of J-Day."

"It is currently in use as a top-secret military-industrial complex." Pops uttered the statement as though it was the word of God. "It is possible that Cyberdyne installed Skynet there ahead of the public launch."

"You mean the missile silos," Sarah tapped her lower lip, "but if it controls those, why did it need Genisys to start Judgement Day?"

"I do not know." Pops pulled out his wallet and slapped two bills on the table. "If we find it, you can ask."


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: So there is, ostensibly plot in this, but also a fair bit of sex. So if hot and steamy isn't your thing you might want to skip the middling 70% of this chapter and, uh, sorry?**

* * *

Denver was civilization and civilization meant finding a living space that wouldn't be tripped over by patrolmen or intruded on by teenagers or addicts. There were hidey holes Pops had prepared in the surrounding countryside, but he was the first to admit that the preferred locations required further efforts to be fully livable. They were foxholes, not bunkers. So the options were camp in the truck or put up in a hotel for the night and that was no choice at all.

Pops pulled into an empty spot and pointed at a dark window on the second floor above the car. "Room 221 is empty, Sarah Connor. It has the optimal exit strategy. I will watch the car."

Sarah nodded, hiding her smile in the collar of the overlarge coat she had draped over her shoulders against the cold. "I know, Pops. Good night." She cocked her head at Reese, and led the way into the lobby.

The concierge looked up from his phone and nodded affably at the couple as they entered. "Good evening, folks. What can I get for you?"

"Room, please, second floor, east side."

The concierge clicked a few buttons on the console before him. "You're in luck, we've got one vacancy in that block left: 221. How long will you be staying with us?"

"One night," Sarah dug around in the pockets of her coat and pulled out a wad of bills, passed the requisite number over and accepted the key in return. "Thank you."

"Enjoy your stay," The attendant waved them off and went back to his phone.

Sarah wrinkled her nose and waited until they had rounded a corner before speaking. "I thought those things would have stopped working now that Skynet's gone."

Reese shrugged and adjusted the bag over his shoulder as they found the stairs. "Well they were using them before Genisys went live, right? Stands to reason that if they worked before Skynet took over they'd keep working after it died."

"I guess," Sarah rubbed at the wound on her neck. "I just hate to think of it out there, lurking as a few lines of code in some software or whatever, rebuilding and waiting to make its move." She stopped in front of the appropriately labeled door and fiddled the key into the lock.

"Run it by your Pops in the morning, it's not like it's going to go from hiding in an app to world domination overnight." Reese edged in behind her and looked around the inoffensive room, one large bed, one small couch, one smaller chair. "I'll take the couch."

"Don't jinx it," Sarah rolled her eyes at him and dropped her coat on the corner of the couch. Pushing aside the curtain, she waved at the dark truck below the window and replaced the curtain. "And don't be ridiculous. You couldn't fit on that couch if you tried." To prevent him from trying to prove her wrong, she sat down on the hard, scratchy cushion not buried under her coat and began tugging at the laces of her boots one-handed.

"How's the arm?" Reese knelt beside her and pulled the bootlaces free.

Her socks were damp and probably stank to high heaven. She wiggled them around in the carpet, trying to keep them as far away from Reese as possible. "I'll live."

"Humor me," He shed his own coat, dropping it on top of hers. "Just a big dumb soldier following mission parameters, okay?"

Sarah took the hand he offered, stiff legs protesting as he helped her to her feet. "Okay, fine, but then I get to do you after and I get the first shower." The double-entrendre occurred to her about ten seconds too late. "Oh, no! I meant like, check you out." The back of Reese's neck was scarlet, and Sarah grimaced. "Is that better or worse than 'do you'? I guess I could just pull a Pops and be all 'perform inadequate visual diagnostic'." She pulled down the corners of her mouth and gave a respectable impression of the deep mechanical accent.

* * *

"I know what you meant," Kyle could barely hear the words over the hammering of his heart in his mouth. She had no idea, none, about what she did to him, as though the memory of her gripping onto his thigh, the kiss, the single bed were not enough to make his blood burn. He could handle it, he'd get some desperately needed alone time in the shower and he could wash all the frustration and want down the drain until she decided she was ready, or she told him to take a hike. "Hang on," he left her, standing in her socks on the stark linoleum of the bathroom, and collected the first aid kit. He was gone for seconds, but by the time he returned she was trapped with her shirt tangled over her head, revealing a long expanse of white stomach that flexed and twisted as she struggled to get the ruined shirt over her head. "Whoa, take it easy." The kit clattered against the sink when he dropped it and he was at her side, untangling her from the crusty fabric and guiding it over her head. "What's the rush?"

"It itched," Sarah scratched at the rusty stains disappearing into her black bra, chips of dried blood flaking off under her nails. Nudging past, she leaned over to look in the bathroom mirror as he stripped the gauze and medical tape away. The wound gaped when she prodded it with a ginger finger, "I thought it would look a lot worse."

Kyle frowned at the bony back she presented to him, dappled with black and yellow bruises and speckled with tiny pink burns. "It looked worse last night. You heal quickly."

"Yeah," She prods at the pink flesh around the incision; John's last gift to her, and then inspects a long strip of shiny skin on her arm. "Guess I got off fairly lightly, huh?"

"We lived," Kyle meets her eyes in the mirror and shrugs, "Everything else is a bonus."

Sarah nodded and turned away from the sink, "How about you? Anything I need to look at?"

Kyle took a half step back and lifted them hem of his tee-shirt, dragging the thin cotton off and tossing it in the corner on top of Sarah's shirt. "Nothing worth mentioning," He hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans and stood there self-consciously as she studied him.

"Did you clean this?" She was in his personal space, fingers hovering over the half-scabbed laceration he had received from the T-1000 upon his arrival in 1984.

"I was a little busy having my ass hauled out of the fire by a crazy woman in a ridiculous truck."

"Don't call my truck ridiculous," Sarah slapped him lightly on the chest, hand landing on the corner of an older scar running in parallel to his newest. "How'd you get this?"

His skin tingled where her hand rested and Kyle dwarfed her hand in his, dragging the pad of his thumb over her scarred knuckles. "Machete. In the early days, right after I joined, there were still a lot of nuts who thought they had a better chance of surviving if they swiped the common supply and set off on their own." He let out a bark of humorless laughter. "Funny enough, there were fewer every year. For a while it made me question what we were even fighting for, if humanity was even worth saving, if they're all so shitty and selfish."

"What changed your mind?" Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

"John." His free hand found the soft skin of her cheek and he drew a calloused finger down to her chin. "Enjoy your shower." Kyle grabbed their dirty laundry and beat a hasty retreat to the primly made bed, falling back on the impossibly soft covers as the bathroom door slammed shut. He stared at the stucco ceiling and listened to the sound of running water, regaining control of himself. It had been all too real back there, the memory was somehow more poignant with Sarah's fingers rubbing over the white ridge of skin. And he could have gone without bringing John Connor up again, or ever really. His squad had failed John in 2029 and he had failed John again in 2017. At least Sarah had survived; though that too had been far closer than he would have hoped. Shit, he had nearly pushed the button to kill them all and it was only John's interference that had stopped him.

"Fuck this," Kyle growled and stood, checking the locks on the door and windows, glancing down at the truck down in the parking lot and busying himself with a basic exercise routine to distract himself from his stupid bullshit thoughts. He stopped when the sound of water died and when Sarah exited, dripping wet and smothered under a huge fluffy towel, he was back on the bed as though he had never been anywhere else.

"Saved you some hot water."

"Thanks," Kyle didn't look at her as he brushed past to the doorway wafting steam, didn't look at the wet hair clinging in black tendrils to her neck, or the way tiny rivers of water ran down her shoulders and under the white towel. It didn't matter; everything was seared into his mind's eye from the battered, well-loved Polaroid John had given him, to the lean black shadow twisting on the wall across from him or the slender white limbs convulsing in the agonizing distortions of the quantum field.

Shaking his head to banish the images, Kyle unlaced his boots and kicked them off, following with his socks and pants, balancing on the slick tile to fiddle with the unfamiliar chrome mechanism in the shower wall. Water jetted out, stinging hot, and he shuddered as he stepped under the spray, acclimating to the unfamiliar sensation. There was soap, ivory smudged grey with smoke and gunpowder particulates, and he added his own grime to the bar, coating himself in suds that stung in open cuts and rinsed the dirt down the drain. There's a lot to be said for living in a pre-apocalyptic society; its creature comforts far surpassed anything in his soldier's life. His thoughts strayed back to the woman on the other side of the wall and he had one last bit of pressing business to attend to while the hot water lasted. He was hard at the first thought of fierce blue eyes and a gentle touch of female fingers on an old war wound. Slowly he rocked into his hand, bracing himself against cold clammy tile as he thought to the shape of her mouth before she kissed him, the way her knuckles went white on the pump of a shotgun, the way she fit against him, the feel of her skin under his hands.

"Sarah," He whispered her name into the crook of his elbow as he came, breathing through the aftershocks and rinsing himself off as the water cooled. It wasn't the first time he had jerked off thinking about Sarah Connor, but the fantasy of the unknown was nothing when compared to the brilliance of reality. She was so much more than the picture, so much more than an unattainable ideal and she had left him a towel on the rack beside the sink. He dried himself quickly and dragged the pants back on over his hips.

The air outside the bathroom was bracing, and Kyle found Sarah staking her territory on the couch, their coats bunched under head as her bare legs swung over the arm as she thumbed through some stapled print outs under the yellow light of a reading lamp. "Anything good?"

"Pops had it in the supply bag; just stuff on Skynet's current incarnation, or whatever it was before we blew it up. You're welcome to it, if you want." She tossed the paper onto the coffee table, revealing nothing but a pair of black panties and a too large black tee-shirt. "Feeling better?"

"The showers you got in this time are great," Kyle agreed, taking a seat on the edge of the bed facing her. "You ready for lights out?"

* * *

"Not quite," Sarah swung her legs around and stood, arching her back in a stretch and ruffling her still damp hair before padding towards him. She didn't know how to ask for this, wasn't even sure what this was that she wanted, but Reese sat like a deer caught in the headlights, like a man awaiting his fate, or possibly judgement. Slowly, like he might bolt if she makes any sudden movements, she reached for him, dragging the pads of her fingers along the sharp angle of his jaw, down the fluttering pulse point and coming to rest on the hard muscle of his shoulder. "Kyle." His head jerks up, green eyes wide and dark. "This is the fate I want." With a little more certainty she ran her free hand through short blond hair down to his cheek.

"It's yours," Turning his head, Kyle murmured the surrender against her skin and pressed a lingering kiss to her palm.

His mouth on her skin made Sarah shudder, a heady combination of delight and anticipation, and she eased onto his lap, straddling his thighs. A hand, large and warm, came to rest on her back under the borrowed tee-shirt, short blunt nails digging in as she carded her fingers through his hair again and smiled down at his rapturous expression. She was taller in this position, and it was beautiful to look down at him, head tilting up to meet her, chapped lips parting in wait. She did not intend to make him wait too long. She brought her head down to his, noses brushing, sharing several heavy breaths before gripping the back of his neck and closing the last distance between them. Beneath her, Kyle froze as her mouth mapped his, but when she flicked her tongue out to taste his skin it was as though a dam had broken. His hands were everywhere, skating up her bare thigh, kneading into her back, tangling in her hair and smoothing down her ribs, leaving trails of fire wherever they went. She nipped his lower lip and the soft gasp he uttered gained her access to his mouth and sent heat to the pit of her stomach. His mouth was warm and his tongue was soft and he tasted like nothing she could think to describe except that it was perfectly right.

Kyle surged up against her, giving as good as he got with lips and tongue and teeth, using her legs to drag her closer against the bulge in the front of his jeans. At first contact Sarah ended the kiss, sitting up on her knees, eyes bright and curious, head cocked to one site. Using the tips of her fingers against his chest, she steadied herself and rolled her hips against the new contact, watching Kyle's head tip back as he breathed out her name. His hands clenched involuntarily around her legs, so she did it again and the bowed forward to taste the long column of vulnerability exposed. A few trials were required to determine the best contortion to allow her to main contact, panties to jeans, but she hooked a leg around his waist and that proved very satisfactory indeed for tracing from his ear to shoulder with her lips. She repeated the gesture down his Adam's apple, down to the dip of his clavicle.

"Jesus, Sarah, do you want-"

His voice rumbled against her mouth and she nipped the juncture of neck and shoulder, earning a shudder in response. "Yes," She didn't know what she was agreeing to, but it hardly seemed to matter at this juncture; in the moment she wanted everything he had to offer, wanted to give everything she had, worship and be worshiped in return, protect and stand guard over the entangled fate they shared. Her mouth found his again as his hands explored more freely, caressing the hard curve of her ass, brushing up under her tee-shirt, exploring the swell of her breast. Sarah shivered and pulled back enough to get her hands on the hem of the tee-shirt and pull it off, letting it fall by Kyle's feet. The air in the hotel room was cool against her skin and she pressed closer to soak in his body heat, smiling down at Kyle's awestruck expression.

Hot fingers ghosted over her gooseflesh and Kyle gave her a serious look. "Do you want to get under a blanket?"

Sarah wove her fingers around his warmer hand and dragged it slowly up from her abdomen to cup her breast. "I want to see you, Kyle" Her voice came out low and smoky and she felt his erection twitch beneath her in response. There was so much to explore here, in both the physical and emotional, and she had no idea which to jump into first. She ghosted her hands over his front, watching hard lines of muscle heave under her hands, the jut of his hipbones, the abrupt change in texture from skin to denim. She slid fingertips under the waistband of his pants, nails scraping lightly until she found the button on the fly, fumbled and flicked it open. The zipper slid down and she hesitated only a moment before pressing the palm of her hand to his exposed erection, fingers skating over the hot smooth flesh. Kyle threw his head back and let out a groan that made her shiver with want and his hand joined hers, hips stuttering against their squeezing fingers.

He stopped himself, trembling with effort and looked down at her, rubbing her hand where it melded with his cock. "Sarah," Kyle made her name sound like something holy. "You don't have to-"

"Hush," Sarah cut him off with the slow drag of her thumb over the flushed head, smearing the precum beaded there. There was so much to see, his head tilted his head back in surrender, the way he flexed into her hand with each slow stroke of hers, the sweat breaking out on his chest and shoulders. His hands, frozen on her waist began moving again, drifting to the front of her underwear, rubbing languid slow circles over the thin cotton.

Her breath hitched as he found her clitoris, and Kyle paused, bringing his other hand up to run through her hair. "This okay?" Sarah's only answer was to sit up on her knees and spread her thighs further apart, wrapping an arm around his neck for support and kissing along his jaw.

Kyle nudged the black elastic to the side and repeated the lazy motions against her flesh, teasing her with gentle touches until she had forgotten her hand around his cock and was nothing but the whimpering, shuddering sounds she muffled in his neck and the perfect points of contact where his fingers touched her. "Kyle, please-"

* * *

He swallowed her groan with a kiss and a dark chuckle, securing his grip on her legs and rolling so that she's pressed into the quilt and he's hovering over her, weight propped on his elbows. "I thought you'd never ask." He kicks his damn pants off and hooks his fingers under her panties, dragging the damp garment off and tossing it with her discarded tee-shirt. Sarah hooks a leg around his waist and nudges him back down, her bare legs tangling with his. He dwarfed her with his body, and it reminded him to be gentle, careful as he pressed a finger into her, stroking the soft warmth and searching for the collection of nerve endings with his thumb. She gasped, muscles spasming as he gave her the direct contact she was desperate for, fucking onto his finger. He added a second, curling them inside her, scraping against the fluttering muscle as she raked his back with her nails.

"Want to feel you," Sarah grit out, straining up against the overwhelming new sensations to nip at his shoulder.

It was an excellent thing that he had taken the time he did in the shower, Kyle decided as he guided his cock against her warm wet entrance, arms shaking with exertion as he teased them both, the head of his dick rubbing her clit and making her thrash. He eased into her, breathing deeply and holding back the orgasm dancing behind his eyes. This was important, Sarah was everything, love and life, and he was not going to nut like a damn two-pump chump for their first time. She froze beneath him, heels digging into the small of his back, and he kissed her again, reassured as her tongue swept over his, probing back into his mouth and her hands smoothed over the hot ridges she had scratched into his skin moments ago. Kyle bottomed out against her and held himself still as the interior flesh clenched, hard, and then slowly relaxed and Sarah smiled brilliantly up at him, canting her hips up. It was all the encouragement a man could possibly need.

Time was reduced to the meeting and separation of their hips, the drag of her hands over his shoulders and the taste of her sweat on his lips. Sarah was receptive, but she smiled serenely up at him and that didn't seem like enough to Kyle, not when she could take him apart so perfectly with just a touch. He wedged an arm under the arch of her back and rolled them slowly, taking her place on the sweat-damp sheets and smiling up at her as blue eyes went wide at the new angle and she shifted in tiny, controlled movements, testing the position. She towered over him and he could see, touch, taste everything, feeling each perfect reaction around his dick. Sarah braced her arms on his shoulders and moved in an agonizingly slow grind, letting out a shaky breath and smirking as he tilted his head back and groaned. She set the pace and Kyle was along for the ride, reaching between their bodies and finding her clit, calloused fingers providing the friction that had her keening and fucking against hand and cock until she came apart, dragging him over the long awaited edge.

She collapsed on top of him, and Kyle grinned stupidly into her hair as they struggled to regain lost breath. There was silence as they lay there, twined together, inseparable, and now that the urgency was past, he was content to laze beside her and map the topography of her body, learning the swells of muscle and jut of bone under cooling sweat as her small fingers smoothed over his chest, down and around his rib, causing him to squirm. "Ah, watch it."

"You're ticklish?" Sarah turned her face up to his, mischief glinting in her eyes.

"Yes," Kyle stretched his neck up and kissed her lower lip, guiding her hand back up to his neck and she closed her eyes and kissed back, relaxing against him once more.

Sarah broke the kiss and returned her head to Kyle's chest, tracing down his sternum and the hard lines defining his abdominals. "I always wanted someone to have tickle fights with," She whispered the confession across his skin, breath raising gooseflesh where it ghosted. "Or just hug me because they want to, or ruffle my hair when I did something funny." A little self-effacing laugh, "That's silly, right?"

He sat up, muscles protesting the effort, and crushed Sarah against him, burying his face in her neck. "No, it's not." His voice was a little thicker than he would have liked, but her sad little laugh had cracked something deep within Kyle. To crave something so simple, human touch freely given, to see it casually exchanged by teenagers her own age and be always denied? It was a suffering he couldn't comprehend. "Pops isn't much of a cuddler, huh?"

Her fingers dug into his back, clinging tightly, and Sarah snorted with amusement, "Not really."

Kyle held her, smoothed her hair, pressed his mouth against the pulse beating in her neck, watching the rapid rise and fall of delicate skin, tracing down the tendons to the hollow of her throat and the hard line of her clavicle to the pale scar where John had stabbed her what felt like a lifetime ago. It might have been a trick of the light, but it looked like something moved there, sharp right angles flickering under the skin and disappearing.

"What is it?" Sarah scooted back onto his thighs, looking up at him. "Are you okay?"

Kyle frowned and shook his head, he had to be sure before causing alarm. "Just my eyes playing tricks on me." He ran his thumb over the pale line where the wound had been; as it his imagination or did the soft skin prickle with the many small edges of microprocessors.

"Tell me," Sarah gave him a fierce look and pressed her palm over the area he keeps touching, body suddenly tense.

"I don't want to scare you." The synthetic texture prickled around her fingers, no trick of the light this time.

Sarah flinched at the unfamiliar feeling and yanks her hand away as though burned. "You think this doesn't scare me?" She rolled out of his lap and began threading her legs back through the holes in the black underwear. "I'm going to get Pops." She caught the tee-shirt Kyle tossed her and dragged it over her head, running her fingers through her hair and then crossing to the curtain, fiddling with the lock on the window until it opened.

His pants were crumbled on the floor where he had kicked them, but dragging them on was far less interesting than taking them off had been, and Kyle does up the fly, moving behind Sarah to watch the Guardian exit the truck. He checked the locked door and then crossed the narrow swathe of grass, looking up at them. Sarah nodded down and the old Terminator began to climb. They waited in tense silence and Kyle touched the narrow shoulder in front of him. "Sarah."

Sarah jerked away, spinning to face him, defensive and afraid. "Don't touch me. Not until we know what it is."

"It's a little late for that attitude now, don't you think?" Kyle had to smile, as best as he could, and stretched out his hand. It didn't matter what it was to him, they would figure it out. Sarah chewed the inside of her cheek, considering the words and the unavoidable logic before easing back into his personal space, wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her head against his chest.

Pop's face popped up in the window, and a liquid metal arm inserted into the narrow slit of window, levering it open to allow for the heavy frame to enter the room. The old robot looked at the couple, observing and analyzing before speaking. "You mated. This is good."

The surveillance made Kyle's skin crawl and the commentary made him flush. "That's not really why we invited you up here."

* * *

Sarah turned away from where she was buried in Kyle's chest and looked up at the solemn craggy features. "Pops," Her voice trembled and she heaved a deep breath. "Pops, I need a diagnosis. There's something in here." She gestured vaguely at the area of her shoulder.

Nothing changed for several long seconds. The Terminator stared at Sarah and she stared back. He tilted his head and then frowned. "There is minor contamination of John Connor's microfluidic tissues at the trauma site."

"Minor contamination," Sarah murmured the words, tracing over the faint scar. "What does that mean?"

Pops blinked at her, no doubt running a dozen different analyses trying to optimize his response. "When John Connor stabbed you with his liquid-state appendage he left particulates behind. They have not been removed and so are beginning to migrate to your circulatory system."

"I felt them," Sarah clenched her jaw, shuddering against the memory of skin crawling beneath her fingers, something alive, moving beneath her skin. "That doesn't sound minor." Kyle was a warm presence at her shoulder and she reached blindly behind her for his hand, pressing it over her hip and wrapping her fingers over his. "What is it doing to me?"

"Nothing." Pops eyed her grip on Kyle's hand. "I will continue to monitor it. Go to sleep, Sarah Connor, we have a busy day tomorrow." He stared at Kyle a moment loner but didn't say anything further, just slipped his legs out the window and dropped quietly to the grass below.

Sarah watched him march back to the truck and disappear into the dark interior. Kyle's other hand guided her back against his chest, warm and solid and she laced her fingers through his, tilting her head and staring sightlessly up at the dingy white ceiling. "I will not let myself be turned into some sort of machine." The words felt good, made her strong.

Kyle pressed his mouth against her temple. "I won't let that happen to you."

It was nice to hear, and Sarah killed the light on the desk with a touch, letting Kyle draw her back to the bed and under the mussed up sheets.


	3. Chapter 3

The heavy solid warmth she rested on shifted and Sarah woke to a face full of blankets. She clawed them out of her face and found a wide expanse of skin beneath. A hand smoothed through her ratty hair and Kyle smiled down at her from around the faded print outs he was reading.

"'Morning," He guided her up for a quick peck on the lips.

Sarah hummed with pleasure, kissing back and relishing the moment. "What time is it?"

"Just after six. Pops stuck his head in an hour ago, said to let you sleep it out." He dropped a final kiss on her temple and settled back against the headboard, rubbing slow circles over her shoulders. "You can go back to sleep if you want."

She let him spoil her for five luxurious seconds, before pushing away and rolling out of bed. "We should get going." She let him read as she sorted through the contents of the duffel and retrieved yesterday's bra and pants from the corner, dragging them on as she slogged to the bathroom to clean her teeth. When she was done, she ceded control of the bathroom to Kyle and busied herself packing their small bag, checking for waylaid clothes, documents and weapons they might have tucked into a dark corner and forgotten about. She was lacing her boots when he sauntered out and pulled his jacket on.

They left the hotel without incident and drove west through the sleepy city. Pops didn't need to be prompted to stop at the first open café they encountered, parking illegally in front of the door. The bell jingled when they entered and the clerk at the counter nodded tiredly at them as Sarah placed an order for toast, coffee, juice and eggs. Then she went and led the group to a corner table where she could look out the window discreetly and waited. She hadn't gotten bored of looking at the empty street and dark storefronts when the coffee, breadbasket and eggs were dropped in front of her.

She managed to choke down most of her eggs before the pressure of her thoughts grew too heavy to keep to herself. "It's still there, isn't it?" Sarah directed the question to Pops, staring intently at the slice of toast sitting in center of her plate.

"Yes," Pops pushed a shallow bowl of butter and jam packets across the table until it rested by her elbow. "Eat your breakfast, Sarah."

She shot him a dirty look, then complied, smearing butter and marmalade over the rough-textured bread. She took a bite, chewed, swallowed and then spoke. "It doesn't make sense, though. If Skynet's dead then shouldn't all of John's stuff just stopped? What if we were wrong, what if it's still out there, controlling this stuff I'm just carrying around?"

"The contaminating particulates have not given any response pattern or made an attempt at replication or activity since discovery." Pops intones seriously, then grabs the skinny wrist sneaking across the table towards his coffee cup. "Additional stimulant consumption will increase your stress responses. Drink your juice." He waited until Sarah withdrew her hand, scowling. "Whether Skynet has found a way to continue its existence beyond the Cyberdyne laboratory require further observation before a determination can be made."

"That's why we're here, right?" Kyle pauses his methodical consumption of the food in front of him to voice the inquiry. "Denver was the lynchpin location for Skynet in 2029. It kept all its most valuable infrastructure and support systems there."

"In a bunker deep under the Rocky Mountains." Pops nodded, "I remember the location, but as a manufacturing site for Terminators." He touched the side of his fleshy face. "This is interesting information, Kyle Reese, we should investigate as soon as we are able."

It took time for the humans to finish their food and pay and then drive out of the city, past the steady stream of commuters beginning their day with traffic. The highway turns into a narrow winding road climbing the harsh slopes and the truck crawls up through heavy cloud-cover. Pops pulls off the main road to a narrow dirt road that winds through the misty morning and then stops several miles down at a location that is entirely unmarked, as best as Sarah can see.

"From here, we walk." He turned sharply on his heel and marched into the dense forest, Sarah and Kyle sticking close to his heels.

"How are they supposed to move military tech through this?" Kyle prodded a damp, decaying log with the toe of his boot.

"Quiet. You will see." Pops marched them, silent and tired and sweaty up the mountain and then stopped in front of an old wooden shack so overgrown with moss and crawlers that it was all but indiscernible from the forest floor. He touched the fingerprint scanner disguised in an old discolored lock then pushed the door open. "Here."

It wasn't a hidden military installation or Skynet's lair, but in terms of firepower it was probably a close third and it though it was the first time she had ever been here, the crates of ammunition and racks of firearms felt like home to Sarah.

.

.

Kyle nudged the door shut behind them and looked around with professional interest. "Nice set up," Someone, and he felt quite confident in his guess as to who, had expended considerable efforts to dig out a roomy subterranean cellar and furnish it as a rough living space, half hidden behind the mountains of supplies. There was no running water or windows, but it was a better hideout than plenty of others he had used. "This your place?"

"One of many," Pops went to the wall dedicated to long-arms and took down an old AR model, pulling the slide back for any sign of stickiness or other ill effect of sitting out for extended periods of neglect. "The entrance is a short distance away; this is a good point for observation."

"All right," Sarah helped herself to a handgun, checking it over before stowing it in her belt. "Let's see what they've got." She led them back into the bright morning, fog already burning away as the day grew hot, and then moved back to her place behind Pops. The second walk was much shorter and mostly downhill.

Pops gestured for them to halt. "Get down and crawl forward."

Kyle glanced back at Sarah and complied, dragging himself over leaf litter as quietly as he could manage and eased into a nest of gnarled roots at the forest's edge and peered around the wide trunk. He took in the wide expanse of field mowed short, the high chain link fence set with motion detectors and bordered with barbed wire. Past the fence there was more wide open space with close-cut grass leading to a flat road and a guarded booth with a lowered barrier. Small movements in his peripheral vision hinted at additional sentries lurking in tactically optimal positioning around the clearing, probably well-armed and carefully trained. The road curved across a second checkpoint and then disappeared into a tunnel bored into the face of the mountain they were sitting on, disappearing underground. As defense perimeters went in this current time of relative peace it was pretty damn thorough. He glanced over at Sarah, watching the scene with narrowed eyes and decided he had seen enough. It was profoundly unsettling to turn his back on that many armed men, even if they did not know he was there, but it was hard to crawl backwards quietly, so Kyle turned and slunk back to the deeper cover where Pops waited. "It's pretty good," He nodded back at Pops. "They watch the airspace?"

"Watch always, patrol randomly," Pops helped Sarah to her feet as she crawled back to join them.

"Does the fence go all the way around?" Sarah brushed the leaves out of her hair and then gestured at Kyle to bend over so she could do the same for him.

"Yes."

"Well, shit," Sarah gnawed at her lower lip. "I bet they have serious emergency shut down protocols for that road. A mountain like that could turn into a fortress real quick if they sealed off that road. At least, that's what I'd want if I was designing a secret underground military facility."

"There was not time to hollow out a mountain for your use. It would have been an impractical use of resources." Pops intoned, but despite his robotic monotone managed to sound faintly defensive.

Sarah waved her hand, either in dismissal or apology. "Of course not. Are there any other, less guarded entrances?"

"That is the less guarded entrance. If you have completed your initial observations we should go back. This area is not secure." They backtracked to the deceptive looking shack by an entirely different route. Kyle hadn't seen any indication that the guards would patrol out past the fence, but Pops was emphatic in his desire to not beat down any trails and the environment was alien enough that Kyle didn't care to dispute it. The woods were fundamentally different from all the other places he had grown accustomed to fighting. It was almost enough to make him with they were back in the city, at least he knew how to react in an urban environment. Here? The trees were both too much cover for potential enemies and yet not enough to make him feel properly hidden.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Sarah had snuck up on him and he started when she touched his arm. If she noticed she chose not to comment, instead sliding her hand down the crook of his arm and lacing their fingers together, looking around with a contented smile.

"It's different," Kyle allowed, frowning up at the foliage that blotted out the sky. That would provide satisfactory cover against aerial patrols; he supposed that was why the Machines had razed it all at the start of the war. "So do you have a plan for getting in?"

"Not the front door, obviously," She rolled her eyes at him and squeezed his fingers, then dropped his hand to finger the scanner on the door and push into the dark interior. She made a bee-line for the shelf of supplies along the back wall and pulled out two plastic-wrapped MREs. She tossed him one and then clambered onto a rough wooden crate and peeled back the packaging. "Pops? What did you see?"

Pops closed the door and stood at quiet rest before it, another layer of protection between them and the rest of the world. "The fence is electrified in addition to the motion sensors and razor wire. Six guards patrolled the road, four more just inside the mouth of the tunnel. My vision was good to a depth of ten feet and then was impeded by granite bedrock. I was able to infer independent sources of electricity. Gas generators is the most probably source. If Skynet is active inside the facility I am unable to detect it."

"Is that something you can do?" Kyle wasn't sure if what rippled through him was intrigue or disgust. He couldn't forget what Pops was, but information had always been their most valuable weapon against the machines and it was not a habit he was in any hurry to break. "Just sense if Skynet's near? What about other Terminators?"

"I can sense the remote request to share upload-downloads. My override allows me to deny them. If no request is initiated, I cannot sense either of them."

"Infiltration? Distraction? Sabotage?" Sarah railroaded the conversation back to their current conundrum around mouthfuls of long lasting spaghetti in beef marinara. "There's got to be a way in. There's always something we can attack."

"It will take time to crack," Pops didn't seem particularly concerned. "Human security systems are fallible but they have evolved considerably in this time. We will continue our observations and formulate a strategy accordingly."

"How much time?" Sarah shifted in her seat, perched like a bird preparing to take flight.

"As long as it takes," The Terminator spoke with the patience of a being who had been comfortable waiting thirty years to meet its surrogate daughter on the other side of a quantum time field. "I will take the first shift."

"Wait," Sarah ordered as Pops turned to go back out. "Has my condition changed since last time?"

He studied her briefly. "The particulate is diffusing through your circulatory system, but otherwise unchanged. Probable cause is the physical exertion sustained during this morning."

She ground at the site of the injury with the heel of her hand, it looked like it was becoming a nervous habit. "That sounds bad."

"At this time it makes no difference."

Sarah grimaced at Pops' nonchalance. "Maybe not to you. But it's inside me, this thing that's part of the enemy, and it's just working deeper? What if it's some kind of sleeper-cells that's just kind of worming into my brain to turn me into some awful Skynet-slave? We don't know what John was, we don't know how he was turned. Maybe it was the same way!"

"Hey, hey Sarah." She wasn't the first hysterical soldier Kyle had seen start to crack under the pressure of an unknown terror. He inserted himself into her field of view and removed the foil package from where it trembled in her hands. Tossing it carelessly on a cluttered bench by the wall he turned back to her, cupping her face in his hands. "It wasn't like that, I was there, it was different. I need you to breathe, okay? John wasn't stabbed, it wasn't slow or stealthy. You're going to be okay." Her fingers dug into his wrists, painful, but pulling him closer even as the words made him feel sick. He didn't want to think about this, didn't want to recount it, but how could he hold the truth back if it would ease Sarah's panic?

Her chest rose and fell slowly, and she eased her grip, nuzzling into his palm. "What was it like? With John?"

His hands drifted through her tied back hair, down her back, of their own volition while Kyle collected himself to give a coherent report. "Awful." He let out a deep breath as her arms wound around his waist and drew strength from the contact. "The quantum field was activating when the plant made its move. It killed a dozen men in approximately ten seconds using the standard issue sidearm. John barely had time to react before it grabbed him." He closed his eyes tightly, trapped in the moment. It was worse, far worse, knowing that it was his son's violation he had watched and been helpless to stop. "It grabbed his face, palm covering his nose and mouth. That weird grainy liquid-sand stuff just started pouring off its body. I don't know what happened next, but it wasn't just a simple incision."

Sarah huffed a sigh into the front of his shirt and released her bruising grip enough to look up at his face. "That sounds terrible."

He snorted at the understatement and tugged her ponytail gently. "It was, but there's no use crying over it now, right? We got other shit to deal with." She moved to withdraw, eyes growing distant and cold, but he stopped her with a touch. "Hey, I didn't mean it like that. I just think that if Skynet's endgame was to have John turn you into a machine, it would have happened already. There were too many chances that he didn't act on. This thing that's happening to you is shitty, but we're going to take care of it."

"How?" Sarah eyed him warily.

It was a fair question, and Kyle felt lucky that he could land on a decent response quickly. "We could try getting you under an MRI. It almost worked against John and you've only got a little bit of that material floating around."

She nodded, satisfied for the moment. "All right, good thinking. Pops?"

Pops frowned, "This is a higher prioritization than observation to you?"

Sarah grimaced and then shook her head. "If it's not getting worse then we should focus on finding Skynet. It's not like hospitals are difficult to find."

"That is the appropriate logical conclusion," Pops gave a nod of approval. "I will go and observe the main entrance to determine if there is any exploitable weakness in their security on that side. You and Kyle Reese go get the truck off the road and make the livability adjustments you require, then return to the observation point at the back entrance." He scanned the room, cold blue eyes landing on Kyle. "I will alert you if I have anything to report. Kyle Reese, come with me."

Kyle frowned but complied, grabbing a rifle off the rack and following Pops out into the forest. He was expecting it, but was still unable to evade fully when the old infiltration unit caught him by the collar and lifted him off his feet, pinning his back against a tree. He got his rifle in between them, instead of trapped under his back, and had the pistol in his belt out and shoved in the wrinkled old face, but if this was his old stomping ground he'd have been toast. It was a discouraging thought, he'd be no good if he went soft now.

"Do not hurt Sarah Connor."

Rolling his eyes in disgust, Kyle shoved the pistol away and dug his hands into the flesh and metal arms crushing against his throat to ease the pressure. "Is this about the mating thing again? I'm not going to hurt her." The pressure vanished as suddenly as it had come and he flexed his knees as he dropped several inches to the ground. "You need to get one thing through your circuitry right now, all right? I love Sarah. There is nothing I wouldn't do for her, okay? Whatever she wants, whatever she needs, you and I are on the same fucking page, so quit giving me dirty looks like I'm going to run out on her just because we had sex. Which, quite frankly, is none of your damned business." He collected himself and took a measured step away from where he was leaning into the Terminator's face. "So are we cool?"

Pops blinked once, "We are 'cool', Kyle Reese. You have convinced me of your sincerity."

Kyle watched the wide back disappear into the woods, waiting until his pulse and hands were steady enough to go back inside. The fingerprint scanner accepted his touch, and that did quite a lot to make him feel better about the whole situation. Whatever over-protective father bullshit the Machine was trying to project, it still recognized that he was a part of this team, that he belonged here.

Sarah was bent over a workbench spread with topographical maps of the area. "What was that about?"

"Your dad's kind of an asshole," Kyle returned his unused weapon to its empty space on the rack and crossed over to her, looping an arm around her shoulders and kissing her neck.

"He has his moments," She luxuriated under his touch. "I didn't hear any shots fired, so I guess you both showed some restraint." She skated her fingers down his front, brushing against where the pistol was wedged under his belt. "Is that a gun or-"

"A gun," Kyle snickered, pulling up the hem of his shirt enough to expose the black polymer grip, then exhaled heavily as Sarah hinged forward at the waist to press a soft kiss over the sliver of exposed skin.

She straightened her back and smoothed his shirt down, eyes twinkling. "Better leave that on for now; you are a distracting man, Kyle Reese."

Kyle swallowed thickly as she turned her back on him to resume her examination of the maps. "I could say the same of you," He nudged her gently with an elbow, taking his place beside her hip. "What are you looking at?"

"Trying to figure out where Pops left the truck, if we're expected to go get it off the road." Sarah dragged a finger across the small black dot. "Nothing's really mapped here, though. Like, this dot is probably the entrance we saw this morning, so I think the cabin is here," She moved her index finger a few millimeters east. "And the road goes down here like so," She used her left hand to trace the pale blue thread winding across the paper. "So we should be looking around here, but I'm not sure and I'm not a stellar woodsman, so I don't want to go tromping around without some idea about where we're going and how we'll get back." She pushed herself away from the maps with a noisy sigh. "I hate when he does this shit."

"He lets you get lost in the woods all by yourself?" Kyle wasn't sure he believed that.

"In a carefully monitored, controlled environment." Sarah snorted at patted herself down, checking that the armaments strapped to her body were properly concealed. "Says it fosters independent thinking. Let's go."

"I guess it worked," His comment earned him a small pink tongue poked in his direction over her shoulder as Sarah tugged the door open and trotted out into the golden afternoon. They wound around the old tree trunks to the sound of birdsong and dead leaves crunching underfoot, not quite hand in hand, but companionable, close. Sarah had, he learned, grown up in many such cabins and was intimately familiar with the scenery. She taught him as they walked; small, simple things that still gave him a better sense of control over his surroundings; how to move quietly, how to navigate the cardinal directions by the growth of moss on bark, and the scenery became a little less alien, a little less threatening thanks to her.

They had to be getting close, he was pretty sure that was the rotting log he had taken a kick at on their way up here when the indistinct sound of distant voices filtered through the trees. He paused, mid-step and glanced at Sarah. "Hikers?"

"No trails," She kept her voice hushed and shook her head at his optimism. "That way," she jerked her head in the direction of a dense evergreen thicket and began moving cautiously towards it.

Kyle followed, the crunch of leaves and the occasional snap of twig under his boots magnified to a thunderous din that he was sure would call attention to their position. He pushed through the springy, spikey branches and flattened himself along the spongey ground alongside Sarah. The smell of living green things was raw and overpowering, but it helped ground him as the voices grew clearer and the sounds of many heavy feet stomping through the tranquil forest drew close. He looked up as movement flickered in the distance before Sarah shoved his cheek back against the soil. He took the hint and kept his head down, breaths soft and shallow as individual voices emerged among the tread of dozens of boots and canine whining.

"You think they came this far, Shel?"

"Thought we would have seen some sign of them by now-"

"Well the truck was out on the road, wasn't it?"

"It's a huge-ass park, is all I'm saying. They could be anywhere-"

"Quiet!" The conversation quieted to a more discreet murmuring as an authoritarian voice continued. "We have video footage of the suspects entering the preserve, and nothing indicating that they've left. I know damn well this is a crap-ass assignment, but I'm not going to stand there and listen to those Homeland douchebags make any more fucking Ranger Rick jokes, so keep your mouths shut and your eyes open, you hear?"

"Yes, sir!" The voices rang out in harmony, thundering in Kyle's head and leaves crunched under large paws as an inordinately large German shepherd whuffed at the ground a scant meter from where they hid. The dog sneezed, shook itself and then trotted after the stomping feet.

The sound of the men faded slowly, and Sarah waited until the natural forest sounds returned before picking her head up. "Well that sucks," She kept her voice quiet. "I wonder if Pops knows yet."

"They're looking for us?" Kyle frowned, rolling up into a sitting position and looking in the direction of where the patrol had disappeared off to. "Wonder how they knew to look here."

"Doesn't matter," Sarah shook her head and tugged a spikey twig out of her hair. "I guess there's no point trying to get the truck now. Just wish they weren't between us and the cabin."

"Could we sweep around and reach it from the other side?"

"I don't know," She gnawed her lower lip and eased her way out of the underbrush. "Think our best bet is to tail them at this point, see where they go."

Kyle followed her, and quiet and careful, they set off after the fading shouts and stomping boots.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Heeey there, thank you everyone who's taken the time to follow/ favorite and review! It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. I do want to take a moment to reassure everyone that this story is set to continue on for a good long while, I originally had five chapters mapped when I began writing and, well, this is chapter 4 and we're only about halfway through the content mapped to chapter 2, so yes, this will continue to completion. Don't panic! And uh, please do continue to review, and let me know if the characterizations are completely veering off into the wild here. Thanks!**

* * *

The patrolling men were not difficult to track; they broke branches, flattened brambles, filled the air with shouting, cursing, complaining and laughing. It all seemed a little backwards to Kyle; there was something very wrong with his world when he was being hunted by his own species with dogs and guns. There were so many other existential threats in the world, how could they think that this level of effort was needed to find Sarah? Fortunately for them, their hunters were single-minded enough to never once look back and check over their shoulder behind them, much less run multiple sweeps over an area, compromising thoroughness for expediency.

Hiking was hot, thirsty work and neither he nor Sarah had thought to grab water before heading out. They kept within eyesight of the wide armored backs for what felt like hours until their progress, despite the canteens they carried and the urgency expressed earlier, slowed and then stopped. They squatted on the bare ground or balanced precariously on exposed rocks. Kyle pulled close to Sarah, whispering in her ear, "Do we try and go around them?" There was always a chance, and it would only grow as the afternoon progressed, that the men would give up and turn around for the night. They did not appear equipped to sleep out in the forest.

Sarah tilted her head in thought as she fluffed her sweat-matted hair, and had opened her mouth to respond, her mouth brushing his, when a shout went up behind them. Her fingers dug into his arm, dragging Kyle the first few steps perpendicular to the group ahead who had turned toward the noise and raised an answering shout. Reinforcements or replacements, then, expected and if not friendly, then certainly aligned with their aggressors. Awesome. The dogs turned with the men, tails and ears up and forward; one looked straight at Kyle and growled. It was ignored by its handlers, but not by its fellow four-legged associates and they turned as a unit to pursue the strange humans. Kyle gave up on subtlety and scrambled over the ridge in front of them, jogging awkwardly down the steep embankment into a ravine.

An alarm went up behind them and they ran. Sprinting in this environment was even less pleasant than the walking had been. Everything was slippery, hiding an obstacle or just generally more difficult than it had been before. Gunshots split the tranquil afternoon, chipping bark off a tree trunk a dozen meters to his left. Kyle dropped back enough to plant himself between Sarah and their pursuers and then ran on. Sarah glanced back as he changed his position, neglecting her footing, and stumbled, rolling along the ground under the force of her own momentum and pushed back to her feet. Her strides were off and he closed the distance he had placed between them too easily. "You okay?" Breath was precious, he grabbed her around the waist and jogged on as her arm clenched around his neck.

"Rolled ankle; keep going," Sarah set her jaw and pistoned her legs mechanically, ignoring the treacherous wobble on her right side. Behind them the dogs snarled and Kyle sent up a prayer to whomever was listening that they were still moving in the general direction of the cabin and not about to run themselves to exhaustion in the endless forest.

Fatigue and adrenaline battled in his nervous system, adrenaline winning the round when another round of gunfire kicked up puffs of dirt and leaf litter as they scrambled up another steep incline, slowing to kick down at snapping jaws that got too close. His thighs burned with the effort of climbing, of catching himself as his boots slipped again on the loose scree and his palms scraped on exposed stone as he clambered over a chunk of exposed granite. It would have been their luck to find a sheer cliff on the other side, but instead of a potentially lethal drop the hillock just sloped steeply down into another fucking ravine with a bright clear creek and, buried in the trees not fifty meters away, the back of the cabin. The view seemed to spur something in Sarah and she slipped out of his grip, half running, half sliding down the embankment as a bullet whipped by close enough to graze Kyle's jacket. He drew his pistol and returned fire, cursing the shortsighted thinking that had him leave the rifle behind when they started this poorly executed mess. A dog leapt up at him, catching his arm and the momentum sent them both tumbling down the hill, boots over tail. Kyle liked dogs on general principle, but the teeth in his arm fucking hurt and he slammed his unencumbered hand against anything that felt slightly furry as the world spun crazily around him. Gunfire roared again and the dog screamed around his arm and went limp.

Kyle wrenched his arm free of the limp jaws, found the ground under his boots and staggered after Sarah, standing on the far side of the creek with her pistol braced in her hands. He stayed low and she shot over his head at the men on the top of the hill with their superior weapons' range and steady sights. He misjudged the width of the creek; water soaked his socks, but there was nothing to do but run on, zigzagging across the short distance of open ground and weaving into the cover of the trees clustering tightly around the cabin, propelling Sarah forward, cornering hard around the side and standing over her as she pressed open the door and dragged him inside.

* * *

Kyle slammed the door shut behind them as Sarah sagged against the long high countertop under the wall of rifles. She stretched up on her good leg and unhooked a Tavor Bullpup from the wall rested the short heavy weapon on her hip as she flipped a full magazine out of the drawer and slotted it home in the base. Then she gently put the loaded rifle down on the counter in front of her, closed her eyes and took several long breaths. "Can you see anything out the window?"

Kyle flattened himself against the wall and glanced sideways through the high dirty window. "No," He ducked down, "Yes, they're circling around." He tapped the wall by his shoulder with a knuckle. "I don't know how long these logs will keep them out."

Sarah opened her eyes and braced herself more comfortably where she balanced. "Pops always builds these places the same. There's steel under the logs; it should take them some time to figure it out, much less break into."

"The window?"

"Bulletproof."

"The door?"

"Same as the walls."

"What about the dugout?" Kyle nodded at the small earthy cave in the back side of the cabin.

"It's several feet submerged. They're not going to trip over it."

"The roof?"

Sarah raised an eyebrow at the inquisition. "They'd need to get inside to blow the roof off."

"If they got on top of it, could they pry up the shingles and chip through whatever's underneath?"

She chewed her lip and looked up at the dark space above. "I suppose they could, but it looks like there's a trap door, it would be defensible. We shouldn't be here that long, Pops always checks in at least once a day." Sarah shifted her weight to her good leg and stretched the damaged one out before her, rotating her ankle slowly.

"You okay?" Kyle asked again.

"It's still just a sprain," Sarah managed a small smile and looped the rifle's sling over her shoulder. "I would like to sit down while we can, though." Kyle offered her his arm and she squeezed the solid strength as she limped with his help, around the crates of supplies and sagged onto a musty old sofa stowed in the midst of the munitions, food and water. The rifle was propped against the low arm of the seat. "How about you?" She nodded pointedly at the tattered sleeve of his leather jacket.

Kyle held up the arm in question, clenched a fist, and either scowled or pouted at his closed hand. Sarah wasn't sure which. "Oh, son of a bitch."

"Bad?" Sarah straightened and leaned toward him, doing her damnedest to close the distance between them without getting up.

"Hang on," Kyle shuffled around until he discovered the location of the first aid supplies and tossed the large container onto her lap, easing his jacket off his intact arm and then gingerly peeling it off the other.

"Sit," She gave the order and Kyle complied, dropping the ruined leather by their feet. The couch sagged under the added weight and Sarah slid in towards him until their shoulders touched. With the ease of familiarity she sorted through the contents of the blue nylon bag, pulling out several bundles of gauze, isopropyl alcohol and tweezers. He provided his damaged arm, smeared brown and red, against pale skin and she soaked the first pad with alcohol and began wiping away the blood and dirt from the surface of the wounds. A muscle in his jaw flexed as he grit his teeth stoically and she nudged him with her shoulder, gently enough not to disturb the arm cradled in her lap, and smiled up at him. "Hey."

Kyle blew out a breath and returned the smile, some of the tension in his jaw and shoulders easing as she continued her work. "Hey? Is that the best distraction you've got?"

He was teasing her, Sarah inferred, and it was odd but not unpleasant. "I'm working on it." She stuck her tongue out at him, which made him chuckle, which felt incredible, and tossed the dirty gauze on the floor by her boots. The wounds gaped, wet red punctures and gouges and she pulled and pushed as gently as she could manage, trying to see into the damage within. "Can you get me one of those water bottles?"

"Thirsty now?" He stood, shaking his arm out and sending rivulets of fresh blood zigzagging across his skin, and trudged across the confined space to where she pointed.

"Better make it two," Sarah amended the request; now that he had raised the point she felt the thirst, tight and painful in her throat. He saluted without turning around and grabbed two bottles before settling back beside her. She accepted the one he passed over and watched as he broke the seal on the one he had kept for himself. His throat moved as he drank deeply and Sarah was transported back in time to the moment, just last night, when she had touched him for the first time. These thoughts were neither appropriate nor useful, she banished it by pressing her injured foot against the ground until the discomfort brought her firmly back to the present moment and their current predicament. She took his arm back, guiding it out in front of them and away from the upholstery and trickled her water into the holes ripped into his flesh by the dog. She could feel him watching the process from over her shoulder as she manipulated the flesh to open it to the constant stream, the better to flush out any embedded debris that might linger inside and risk infection down the line. When she was satisfied in the completion of her task, she patted the skin dry with a second pad and drank the remaining water. A gun fired and a small white chip appeared in the center of the window. Her reactions were mechanical, automatic, thoughtless. The bottle of water clattered against the floor and she brought the Bullpup up from its resting position beside the couch, rolling off the couch into a kneeling position, bracing the butt-plate against her shoulder and fitting her eye against the scope before she had completely processed what was happening.

"Isn't it bullet proof glass?" Kyle ventured when she didn't look up from the scope.

Four more shots dinged against the glass and Sarah exhaled slowly, heart hammering against her ribs. "Yes." She eased her finger off the trigger and propped the rifle back against the couch before hoisting herself back beside Kyle, brushing the moment off and picking up a roll of gauze. She stayed steady, wrapping the gauze around his forearm, checking the tightness as she went, creating a strong, multilayered bandage as gunfire crackled against the window again. "What do you think they'll do when they realize their strategy won't work?"

Kyle took his arm back when she's done, running a finger under the edge and tucking the loose end away. "I guess it depends on the lengths they're will to go and whether their goal is capture or kill." He looped his arm around her neck and tugged until Sarah leans into his chest. "It's surprising they haven't-"

The boom echoed through the shack and this time they both brought weapons up, Sarah aiming at the door and Kyle the ceiling. A puff of dirt spattered across the floor from other the door and Kyle adjusted his aim toward the source of the threat as the steady thud of a ram started against the door. "Were you going to say blow the door?" Sarah asked over the ringing of her ears.

Kyle nudged her until she sat upright, still watching the unyielding door through her sites, and stood, crossing to take down an AR and collect the additional mags they were likely to need. "Something like that," He conceded. "Will it hold?"

Sarah lifted her face from where it was cushioned against the butt of her gun to shake her head at him, standing cautiously and limping to the wall beside the door. Ignoring the painful sounds of impact she presses her ear against the wall, bringing her eyes just about level with the door. The next impact made her wince, but she kept her eyes open and watched the door stay level with the wall. "Against what they're doing now, yeah," She reported back. With her ear against the wall she could almost make out the voices on the other side, words indistinct but the cadence indicative of discussion. "Wonder what they're saying."

Kyle jerked his head up to the faint outline of a trapdoor in the roof. "We could find out, get a sense of what they're planning. See what's out there."

Sarah frowned, weighing the risks. "If they notice us, it'll key them into a potential vulnerability."

Kyle was already dragging one of the larger crates into place under the hanging cord. "They're humans, if we do it now, while it's light, they probably won't notice."

"Why not wait until dark?"

"Because then they'll have spotlights trained on us. We'd be light-blinded trying to look out. Right now? Natural light, shadows," He checked his wristwatch, "and they'll probably be distracted by eating. Trust me, I've done this before."

His smile was warm and disarmed her completely. Sarah nodded, "Do it then, quickly."

Kyle adjusted the hang of his rifle and clambered onto the wooden crate, testing it beneath him before stretching up to fiddle with the catch on the ceiling. The door sunk down on a hinge and then slid partway open on a track, letting in a thin track of orange light and he could reach out of the narrow gap and pull himself up, just enough for eyes and nose to peer over the edge. He hung there for over a minute before slipping back down and shaking out his arms. He motioned for quiet when Sarah opened her mouth, turned 180 degrees and hoisted himself back up. The second time he dropped down he pulled the hatch shut behind him.

"What did you see?" Sarah asked as he hopped down.

"Twenty man perimeter; pretty much what we expected." Kyle hopped off the crate and closed the distance between them. "There's no way they're planning to just wait us out with what they've got with them. I imagine they're expecting something serious to come in the morning, reinforcements or heavy artillery. They might try and open negotiations for surrender when they have some leverage, but I think it'll be a relatively quiet night." He cupped her cheek with a palm and rested his forehead against hers. "We should rest while we can."

"You think they'll let us?" Sarah let herself be drawn to the air-mattress in the dugout and pulled down on top of him. She wasn't worried, not exactly, this wasn't the first problematic situation she'd encountered, but it was still nerve wracking. Pops should have been back to check in by now, it was nearly impossible that something had happened to him, but it was hard to imagine why he wouldn't do so if he were able to move freely.

"For a few hours," Kyle nodded at the window where sunset was still filtering in. "Start some siren or lights around midnight, rely on nerves to keep us up until then."

"Safe bet for them," Sarah muttered into the shoulder of his tee-shirt. "How do you know so much about this sort of thing?"

"You can't let them take the easy wins," Kyle adjusted his position on the thin mattress and began rubbing slow circles onto her narrow back. "It's just light and sound, annoying, sure, but they won't keep it up long enough to have any real psychological impact." Her muscles loosened slowly under his touch and she hummed and wrapped her arms around his torso, wriggling closer. "And, well, I've been on both sides of this situation. Right now we have the optimal position and they know it; they're soldiers the same as we are, just here for the job."

Sarah pushed herself up to frown down at him. "That is a civilian police force, not the military, and we are not just here for the job."

"They're close enough," Kyle ran his palms down the flexed muscles of her arms. "And I didn't mean it like that. We're here to stop Judgement Day and make sure Skynet is eradicated so that it can never happen. After that, though? Sign me up for peaceful obscurity." She relaxed against him, placated, and stretched up to run her fingers through his hair. It was peaceful, nice even, and he could almost forget the squad outside waiting to strike. Her hands felt amazing on his scalp, his skin and his hands found their way under her tank, kneading into the softness of her lower back. "What do you think-"

"I don't think I could, right now." She flushed warm against his neck and muffled her words against his skin. "Not with all those people outside, it's just a bit much, you know?"

Kyle took a minute to decipher the question she was answering and then gave the top of her head an amused look followed by a peck. "I was thinking more along the lines of a pre-emptive strike against our visitors before their reinforcements get here, say around three or four in the morning."

"Ah," Sarah fumbled with her words a moment, readjusting to the topic at hand. "You think they won't expect it?"

"Not in that time frame; it would be atypical." Kyle rolled them so she law beside him, his good arm winding under her neck and around her back. "But that relies on sleeping now."

Sarah dimpled at him and wove her legs through his, burrowing closer against his chest. "Okay." She felt his breathing even out in under a minute and when she glanced up under her eyelashes at him, his face was relaxed and peaceful in sleep, with none of the caution that made him look like an old soldier instead of a young man. Then she closed her eyes and let the quiet steady rhythm of his heart lull her to sleep.

* * *

The sirens woke them at 0:15 in the morning, a keening wail that rose and fell arrhythmically, punctuated by the renewed pounding of the ram against the door. Sarah slithered off the air mattress and propped the nose of her rifle on a crate that shielded their sleeping space from view, peering over the edge as she balanced on her knees. "Plan?"

Bullets popped dully against the roof, just another component to the din erupting around them and Kyle trained his weapon on the sealed rooftop entrance. "See if it holds." His skin crawled as he made out the scuff of footsteps above them, crunching over the leaves that had settled on the flat roof. All he could do now was hope irrationally that his glimpse out earlier hadn't disturbed the camouflage covering the door. "See if they can break through. The entrance should funnel them in to us." Sarah grimaced, indicating what she thought of being told to just hold tight, but it would be suicidal to go on the offensive at this stage, so she complied as the assault against their house raged on. The numbers on Kyle's watch had rolled forward two hours by the time the sound of boots overhead disappeared, though the sirens and battering against the door continued. Still, it was hard not to feel like the most present danger had passed now that the roof was silent.

Sarah hadn't moved from her position for the entire duration, and Kyle helped her stand on numb legs, swinging her onto the crate she had been hiding behind and she hissed as blood began circulating back to her lower body. "You were saying something about a pre-emptive attack?"

"I guess it's more like a counter at this point," Kyle crouched in front of her, massaging the jean-encased legs as they twitched back to life as she watched the door behind him. "There's no line of site from in here, we'd need to get up on the roof to have a good shot, and we'd be vulnerable to any snipers on the hill we came down, so there's a risk." She snorted at that and he smiled shyly up at her. "It's the only way out I can see, they're going to wear through that door eventually and if they bring in heavy artillery we're pretty much boned."

Sarah nodded, then narrowed her eyes, straining in concentration. "That was gunshots on the perimeter. Go on the roof now."

Now that she mentioned it, Kyle could hear it too, almost lost under the wailing siren and he grabbed the last of the pre-filled mags for their rifles, loading his pockets and adding two heavy pistols for back up. He split his load with Sarah and helped her up onto the crate he had positioned earlier, moving carefully to hop up beside her without stepping on her. The skylight slid open and he hoisted her up, pushing against the soles of her boots as she scrambled onto the roof, going prone and dragging herself out of the way so he could follow. The night air was cool on his skin, bathed in magnesium white light. As long as he didn't look down directly it wasn't too bad and behind the light he could make out general, urgent motions of their attackers breaking position and moving towards a single converging point.

Gunfire spit out flashes of light into the night and plopped into something that glowed wet and silvery and kept advancing despite the holes torn into its front. It returned fire from an old hunting shotgun. "Pops!" Sarah cried out, but the noise was lost amid the sounds of guns firing and the shouts of the wounded. She put her eye to the scope and chose her target. A man in the back dropped with a gurgle and those in the back ranks returned their attention to the house.

Kyle flattened himself against the roof, adjusted his grip on the handguard and set his eye against the optic. He tried to keep his breathing steady as chips of shingle spattered up in his face from a lucky shot and fired. Gunpowder and the puff of gas generated by the bullet's firing gets in his nose and he can do this, has done this often enough without asking if it was difficult or easy, if it was right or natural or just survival. He fired again and dragged himself along the dead leaves and jagged shingles to face in the opposite direction, seeking out their unseen assailants and picking off the dark grey shapes crouching by the ravine. A sniper, hidden in the trees, winged him, gouging another tatter in his tee-shirt and Kyle grunted, holding the trigger for a steady cascade of fire in the general direction the shot had come from. The siren was cut off abruptly, and his ears rang with the silence. A cluster of foliage moved and he swung his sights down, squeezing off a series of rounds. Something tapped his boot and he glanced over his shoulder at Sarah's tired, grime streaked face. "Clear?"

"Yeah."

"Good, get off the roof." Nothing returned fire from the dark woods and it made him uncomfortable. He hadn't seen anything definitive, the odds were against him having successfully hitting a hidden gunman firing blind into the dark, but perhaps the turn of the tide had sent them into a tactical retreat, to inform their superiors and await further instructions. Kyle raised himself to his knees, and when nothing happened stood to his full height, and turned to watch Sarah launch herself off the roof into the waiting arms of the Guardian below.

Pops caught her easily out of the air, swinging her down to reduce the force of the impact as she hugged him. "Where were you?" She demanded, prodding the Guardian in the chest.

Kyle lowered himself down off the roof more cautiously, hanging by his hands for a moment before freefalling the last three feet to the leafy ground. He straightened and looked around at the cluster of dead or dying men, and found himself too tired to feel anything. Sure they were human, not machine, but Sarah would have been dead by their hand just the same. He moved to the hot spotlights, exploring the back until he located a switch and flicked it off, killing the blinding lights one at a time.

"I was infiltrating the compound." Pops blinked down at Sarah. "The liquid metal in my system has some additional properties I am still discovering. I am sorry, Sarah Connor, for making you worry."

"Did it work?" Sarah chose to be pragmatic about it.

"Yes," Pops almost sounded smug. "I was able to join myself to the bottom of a truck going through the gate and explore the facility without detection."

"Did you find Skynet?" Kyle asked shortly. Now that they weren't stuck here, it seemed like a bad idea to linger.

"Not as we know it." Pops fixed his flat-eyed stare on Kyle. "The United States military has adopted Cyberdyne Systems for monitoring its nuclear facilities, but it does not have autonomous control and I do not believe it could evolve into independent intelligence within its current parameters."

"Are those parameters fixed, or is this just theorizing on your part?"

"Fixed; what we are looking for is not contained within that facility. What happened here?"

Pops redirected the conversation with a tone of finality that made Kyle nervous in a way he couldn't articulate. "I'd that that's pretty obvious, yeah? They found the truck and then found us."

"They were out looking for us, Pops. They're watching the roads, or someone is; they just about tripped over us." Sarah fidgeted with the canvas sling across her chest. "Why?"

Pops crossed to one of the dead men, rolling him over and looking down at the corpse's uniform. "Counter-terrorism unit," He announced flatly. "We need to move."

"Yeah, no shit," Kyle grumbled to himself and followed the pair back into the cabin, grabbing up the duffel he had somehow managed to hang onto since San Francisco and stuffing supplies into it.

Sarah was not as easy to distract. "Counter-terrorism? For us? Why?" She caught the items Pops tossed her and stuffed them into a bag of her own.

"Cyberdyne was considered a valuable government asset. It invested heavily in it for military and intelligence purposes. An attack on the facility would represent an attack against the United States Government, an act of war if perpetuated by another country."

She huffed a little disbelieving laugh. "That's ridiculous!"

"Not in this time. I will show you later." Pops looked around the cabin one final time and nodded, satisfied. "Come now." He led them back into the grey pre-dawn light, down yet another invisible path mapped only in his head.

Sarah shook her head slightly at Kyle when he offered her his hand, but stayed close as they trailed Pops down the mountain side. She reached for him in moment where her balance wavered, bracing against his arm long enough to sort her feet out or spare her busted ankle a few minutes, but the lines of stubbornness only deepened as they progressed until they emerged at a section of road that had been blocked off by unmarked black SUVs.

Pops nodded at the back one, "Sentry in the front, stay quiet." The shotgun rested weightlessly in his meaty hand as he brushed his free hand over the number panel on the driver's side door and the locks popped open.

Kyle dumped their things in the dark interior and climbed in the back seat. "Where are we going?"

"South Dakota." Pops waited until Sarah was strapped in to his satisfaction and then gunned the engine.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: Warnings ahead for ridiculous sap, character's not boning despite the author's best efforts, and severe emotional whiplash.**

* * *

Pops hit the gas and the stolen SUV's tires spit gravel as it buzzed down the twisting mountain trail. The radio crackled at them, signal distorted to wordless gibberish. They pulled more sedately into the first half filled parking lot they passed; Pops exiting their getaway car and sliding into a vacant 4x4 as Sarah and Kyle hurried after him. The 4x4 took them out of the twee mountainside town that perched on the side of the mountain, onto the highway, and off the exit ramp to a quiet road running parallel to a wide river. "Get out."

Kyle grabbed the bags and helped Sarah out of the high seat, supporting her weight as the car rumbled off road down the gravel embankment. Pops opened the door and slipped out of the moving vehicle easily, digging his heels in and pulling to slow the truck's progress towards the river. He got a firm grip on the chassis and rolled the car onto its hood. Another solid push had it splashing into the river where the current caught it, dragging it deeper until it sank lazily out of sight. Pops watched for a minute longer and then stomped back up the hill to where the two humans waited. "There is a rental agency five miles down the road; we will walk." He looked to Sarah for confirmation, though it seemed to Kyle that it was a little late to argue against at this stage, and she nodded tightly. It took them nearly an hour to make the trip to the ugly low building hidden behind sedans that had been second-hand ten years ago. "Wait here." Pops nodded at a wooden bench beside the door, grey with age, and Sarah slumped onto it gratefully as he disappeared inside.

Kyle dropped his bag beside the bench and sat, bracing his elbows against the dirty knees of his jeans and watched the sun crest over the Rockies. Sarah sighed, barely more than a breath, and leaned her head against his shoulder. "Thank you."

Wrapping an arm around her shoulders felt as natural as breathing, though the contact of skin against skin sent his heart rate spiking. "For?"

"Last night."

Kyle snorted inelegantly and tugged the matted brown ponytail tickling his arm. "I'm not sure you have anything to be particularly thankful for, there."

She batted at his hand and nudged his ribs with her elbow, making him tense. "You were there with me, you trusted me to fight beside you."

"I don't follow," Kyle shook his head and gave her a perplexed look.

Sarah buried her face in her hands, kneading at the skin of her temples before meeting his eyes. "Ever since Pops told me what was going to happen, with you, I've always had this ridiculous feeling that when I met you, when push came to shove, you'd just see me as this little china doll that needed protecting. You died for me, Kyle, or you will and I hate that thought, that hopeless stupid fatalism that somehow my life is worth more than yours. I don't want us to end like that. I want us to be equal." Her voice had been rising, building to a tirade, but then it dropped back to a murmur, "And last night, we were." She tugged the collar of his tee-shirt until he leaned down close enough to be kissed slowly and perfectly. "So, thank you." She whispered the words against his mouth.

Kyle shook his head in wonderment, the small movement brushing their mouths together again; he closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers. John had warned him a lifetime ago that Sarah would be weak and helpless, in need of protection; civilian not solider, but having met this woman, having fought beside her and cared and been cared for in turn, he could see how she would have ever been weak. But he had come here with a single purpose and having met and fallen properly in love with her had only strengthened his resolve to ensure her survival and damn the costs incurred along the way. "I trust you completely," He acknowledged that part easily enough, the next bit was harder. "But Sarah, you are more than worth dying for." She tensed her shoulders and opened her mouth, but he stopped her with a finger to her lips. "Forget Judgement day, for a minute, forget Skynet, hell, screw humanity and everything else. There is nothing for me in this time if you are not a part of it." His hand slid down her jaw, he could feel the tendons in her neck shift, the pulse under her skin flutter. "But I want to live, with you." The words stumbled awkwardly off his tongue into the silence between them.

Sarah lunged at him, and for a wild moment Kyle wasn't sure if she was going to try and throttle him. After a speech like that he probably deserved it, but she hugged him with all her strength, clinging on like he was the last man on Earth. She trembled under his hands, but though he felt the warm damp of tears against his collar she didn't make a sound. "Idiot," She mumbled against his skin, "What makes you think I feel any differently?"

The bell on the door jingled and Pops came out, eyeing the pair of humans clinging to each other. "Time to go."

Kyle held onto her for a moment longer simply because he could, because the Machine would never leave her behind and then let her brace herself against his shoulder to stand and pulled himself up behind her, scooping up their stuff from where he tossed it and followed her to an old beaten up Subaru. Kyle just managed to squeeze in the front and they drove east, following the rolling highway out of the mountains and onto the highway out of Colorado.

* * *

In the eleven hours it took them to drive from Denver to South Dakota, they stopped only once, at a strip mall in Menoken, a small town just outside of Topeka with tractor stores crowding out the greasy spoon diner where they grabbed lunch. After they ate, Pops lead them around the side to a half-hidden electronics store.

"What are we doing here?" Sarah raised an eyebrow at the empty side lot and the dusty window display.

"Communication channels are currently unsatisfactory. You should have a way to contact me if I am not in the immediate vicinity."

"Like a radio?" That made sense to her; it had been very disagreeable to be surrounded by those armed men last night and not be able to contact her guardian.

Pops considered the analogy a fair minute longer than the question warranted and nodded. "Inside." He pushed the door open and somewhere in the back a bell jingled. A girl at the counter flicked her eyes up at the newcomers and then returned her attention to the device in her hands.

The interior of the shop was very clean and very white, despite the roughness of the exterior, with small black rectangular devices arrayed on shelves around the edge of the room. They were all identical, as far as Sarah could tell, to the devices that the sales girl, and all other civilians she had encountered in this time, were glued to – the vector Skynet had used to attack this timeline through Genisys.

Pops moved decisively across the empty space and selected one black rectangle among the many. "Come here," He beckoned Sarah over and pressed the device into her hands. The device was much lighter than it looked, and when she held it in her palm a light came on, showing a screen crammed with small colorful pictographs.

"Is this really necessary?" Behind her shoulder, Kyle shifted, clearly uncomfortable with the store and its contents.

"Yes," Pops tapped the screen Sarah balanced carefully in her palms and the screen shifted, bringing up an interface Sarah remembered from 1984, a dial pad. "Radios are an inferior form of communication in this time and have limitations communications range across distances greater than 100 miles. A cellular telephone has no effective distance limit and provides access to the global satellite network and internet."

Sarah narrowed her eyes at Pops, "Are you planning on going outside radio communication range any time soon?"

Pops blinked, "I am planning for contingencies. We need information access; this is the optimal method of acquisition."

"Can't those things be traced back to us?" Kyle didn't try to disguise his paranoia and disgust.

Pops took the device, she couldn't quite reconcile it to the word telephone, back and began swiping around the screen faster than human eyes could follow. "There are precautions we will take to minimize the risk."

Kyle shook his head emphatically, "We know Skynet can use those things, they were critical to its grand plan for killing humankind, remember? Until we know it's gone for certain we can't accurately assess the risk involved."

"We cannot complete our search for Skynet without one." Pops countered with the finality of a coffin lid slamming shut. "I cannot perform adequate remote interfacing, even upgraded. This is non-negotiable, Kyle Reese."

Sarah watched the exchange unhappily. "Could Skynet use these to spy on us?"

"Without Genisys? No." Pops collected three small slips of paper from the display under the phone. "This machine has no independent intelligence of its own." He carried the papers up to the counter and exchanged them and a wad of cash for three small black boxes, SIM cards, and data vouchers. Transaction complete, he led them back into the parking lot and their empty car.

It didn't take long for Sarah to get bored of fiddling with the cell phone and break the stony silence hanging between the two males in the front seat. "So, what's in South Dakota? Another possible hideout for Skynet?"

Pops nodded, "Cyberdyne built a private data center there. It is their primary server farm in the United States."

"Server farm?" She couldn't begin to imagine what that would entail.

"Yes," Pops took a few seconds to parse her unarticulated question. "A central location that stores data for remote access. If Skynet is hiding Genisys anywhere in the United States, it is probably there. Use your new phone and locate an urgent care facility in Abderdeen."

* * *

By the time they entered the city limits, night was falling, stars winking in and out of view in the dark blue sky. The Ford cruised slowly down the street Sarah's phone directed them to, passing close enough to the crisp white sign reading 'Aberdeen Emergent Care Center' to make out the fine print detailing office hours. "They close at midnight," Pops announced, "We will watch from that roof," He pointed to a boarded up storefront across the road from the clinic, "And go in at one. Sarah Connor, do you need to eat again?"

Sarah decided that she did, so they circled two nearby blocks and stopped in front of a grubby awning with the faded printing 'Sam's Sammies'. Pops stayed in the idling car as Sarah scrambled out towards the savory smells emanating from the door. Inside was a long countertop grey with age, separating customers from a grouchy attendant, a display of cold cuts and salads, and several long spits of slow-roasting beef.

The dour man flipped a wicked looking carving knife between his hands and wordlessly began hacking at the closest piece of beef, piling dark bread high with chunks of meat, mustard and pickled cabbage, before wrapping them in foil and shoving them at Sarah. "Twelve dollars," He grunted and snatched the bills from her hand, wadding them into a grubby apron pocket and then puttering into the back of the shop and out of sight.

Pops had squirreled the car away while they were inside and was sitting quietly on the bench when they came out of the shop, armed with sandwiches and drinks. He nodded at them and led the way through twisting side streets to the back of the abandoned building with a side door had been boarded up. He snapped the pine boards off, barehanded, and shoved the door open despite the flimsy lock. Inside was dark and dusty, and Sarah stayed close, one hand fisting in Pop's leather jacket as he led them up several flights of stairs and wound around empty spaces where things rustled, invisible in the dark. Her hand was removed from its stranglehold on the leather and his footsteps rang against tinny metal, climbing up and away. He scuffled in the dark and there was a thump as the trapdoor to the roof fell open and the last evening light and fresh air touched her face.

Sarah scrambled up the ladder, hoisting herself up over the lip of the door and onto the roof decorated with graffiti. The railing stretching around the roof was low and rusted; she didn't need Pop's reminder to stay low and away from the edge. She settled down, close enough to see through the windows of the clinic across the street, and unwrapped her sandwich. The beef was still hot and the mustard spicy; it was excellent and she licked her fingers clean as people moved back and forth behind the windows as the last light of day faded and a sliver of moon rose.

Boots crunched behind her and Kyle settled himself at her back, pulling her snug against his chest. "Anything happening on this side?"

His breath tickled against her neck and she leaned back against him. "Nope, looks like a quiet place. You're warm." She hadn't noticed how cold the night was until he had settled close by, radiating heat against her.

"You're not," He rubbed his hands over her bare arms and rested his chin on her shoulder, watching the street below in companionable silence for several minutes. "Is that the only guard they've got?" He nodded at the dark uniformed back hunched over a desk by the entrance.

His stubble scraped against her cheek when Sarah nodded back, "From what I've observed, at least." She tilted her head back against his shoulder and looked up at the wide night sky. "How long have we got?"

The watch face glowed in her peripheral vision, "Just under two hours." Kyle slid his arms down around her waist, warding the chill away as they awaited the chosen hour.

* * *

Night vision made all the difference in getting back off the roof down to the street; instead of pitch black everything was shades of dark grey and they emerged into the street without incident. The windows of the clinic had been dark for an hour, closed down for the night and left unprotected in the quiet little city. Pops took two minutes on working on the lock on the clinic's side door, nudging it open and bee-lining to the number pad on the wall counting down from 10. He stared at it as it counted down three times and then tapped in an eight digit sequence. The blinking countdown stopped – alarm disabled.

Kyle followed Sarah and Pops through the halls of the facility, lit only by the glowing emergency signs. It was quiet, which should have been good, but the skin on the back of his neck crawled. Experience had taught him better than to ignore the prick of instinct, but there wasn't much he could do except keep a wary eye on his surroundings and his hand near the weapon concealed under his belt.

Pops stopped in front of a numbered white door and nodded, "In here." Sarah pushed past him, scanning the plain white room that housed the huge, complicated scanner. Kyle found the light switch embedded in the wall and flicked it on, blinking against the fluorescent glare. The back wall was taken up by a thick glass panel and he could just see the controls contained therein.

Sarah was already pulling off her boots, bra, and belt; she nodded at the two men, "Go start it up." Her hands trembled with what had to be apprehension, but her shoulders were straight, her eyes flinty, and she swung herself up onto the long padded bench sticking out of the machine's mouth, scooting in until only her knees and ankles poked out.

Kyle could just barely make out the shooing gesture she flicked his way from within the clean and claustrophobic space and he followed Pops into the control room, leaving the door hanging open behind them. The clear glass window was already an uncomfortable amount of separation, a solid barrier that would muffle her voice if she called for him would be intolerable. Pops flicked switches on the long panel interspersed with blank screens and tapped a green button that began to glow. A dull clanking sound began, growing to a mechanical roar from the next room and the screens flickered to life. Images flashed across the displays, grey on grey, grainy and blurred but unmistakably a human head and torso. Even untrained, Kyle could see the flecks of artificial looking black particulates, hard edges moving erratically under the pull of the magnetic censors.

Pops turned a dial and the sound from the MRI grew, loud enough to hurt, and Kyle didn't look away from the screen as the particulates were dragged slowly away from Sarah's center of mass outwards. A shriek pierced the deafening roar and Kyle was out the door, to her side, before the conscious thought fully formed. The denim clad legs writhed and struggled for purchase against the padded vinyl and he reached inside, finding hers, as she shrieked again. Impossibly the sound from the machine grew again, not sound so much as all-consuming pain that resonated in his bones and her hands clenched around his until his knuckles cracked. Her scream blended with the thudding MRI cacophony, stretching into infinity, and something warm misted the underside of Kyle's wrists as the ugly smell of blood filled the room.

Nails tore into his skin as Kyle ripped his hands away, sprinting to the other side of the room where the red emergency switch sat high on the wall. He slapped it, leaving a red handprint behind, and metal ground against metal as the sound faded. He ignored the keening silence and rushed back to where Sarah lay limp and unmoving. He pulled her out by her ankles, sickened by the dark stain over her abdomen and the red speckles dashed across her arms and face. The pulse in her wrist flickered erratically under his fingers and Kyle replaced her arm on the bench gently. Bracing himself for the worst, he lifted the hem of her shirt and eased it up to her ribs. It was bad, the smell of a gut wound and solid black bruise of internal bleeding that disappeared under her shirt and pants had haunted his dreams before and now would do so again. It took effort to force himself not to cringe away; to try and note objectively where and how many hair-fine punctures oozed blood and whether there was a single damn thing he could do to help her.

Boots thumped against the linoleum behind him and adrenaline fueled rage gave Kyle the strength to shove the observing Terminator against the wall, hands straining around the thick neck. "What did you do? What the fuck did you do to her?!"

The Terminator looked steadily past his shoulder to the limp girl on the table. "She will recover."

His hands slipped on the blood smearing on the Terminator's neck and Kyle squeezed, muscles in his arms straining to crush the metal beneath the artificial human covering. It didn't seem to make any difference to the Terminator, but the pain made him feel better, slightly. "Did you know that this was going to happen?"

"It was the obvious conclusion to your suggestion of using the MRI. She is still human, unlike the T-5000; stripping out the micro-fluids would inevitably damage the surrounding tissue. Do not blame me for your lack of foresight."

"Fuck you," Kyle dropped his hands and stepped back to Sarah's side. He folded his hands around her limp one and held it tightly in front of his chest. He didn't believe, couldn't believe, the Guardian's assessment that she would survive this; it seemed impossible. He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, trying to quiet the insane emotional cocktail swimming in his veins. When he opened his eyes, her face had relaxed slightly and the pulse beat visibly in her neck, steady and strong. Something crawled along his peripheral vision and Kyle turned quickly enough to give himself a slight vertigo, but even after he blinked it away the movement remained – tiny black patterns flickered under the ruined skin of her stomach, flashing erratically, artificial and shiny against the black bruises. He dropped her hand and braced himself against the bench, enchanted and terrified as the pattern flickered intermittently under the broken skin.

Fingers flexed against the vinyl and Sarah hissed in pain. Her fingers clenched around his wrist and tugged him closer, though she didn't open her eyes.

"Sarah? Can you hear me?" Kyle twined his fingers with hers and used his free hand to brush hair plastered to her skin with sweat and blood away from her forehead.

She groaned and clenched herself into a fetal position, free hand pressing across her stomach. "Feel like shit; did it work?" Her words were slurred, but Kyle was willing to take any sign of cognizance he could get.

"I don't know," His thumb smeared red over her cheekbone and he glared up at the Terminator, "What do you think, Pops?" The affectionate, innocent nickname tasted like poison when he spat it out.

"Ninety percent of the invasive material was ejected during the procedure," Pops met Kyle's antagonistic stare levelly. "We need to go, now. Can you walk?"

Sarah tried to straighten her legs from where she had curled them and choked on a scream that flayed Kyle straight to his soul. "I've got you; its okay," He murmured against her hair, keeping a suspicious eye on Pops as he eased his arms under her shoulders and knees. He lifted her easily off the bench and held still as she incrementally eased herself against his chest, head pressing over his thundering heart. Slowly, keeping his arms as still as he could manage, he followed Pops back out of the facility to the waiting car.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: Fun fact: emoticons (in their current usage) were invented back in 1982. I highly doubt Sarah would have encountered them as Pops was serving as her primary source of technological information, but they were definitely around at the time! Also, while this is supposed to be a fairly angsty chapter, this is apparently something I struggle with. So enjoy a little bit of angst and know that the original intent was much, much worse. I'll keep practicing, because you guys deserve the very best. Lastly, a special thanks to everyone who's left a review on this; it's hard to express just how motivating it is to read them and know you're all enjoying the ride so far.**

* * *

Kyle held her in the back curled tightly in his lap as Pops took them out of Aberdeen and miles down a road, featureless in the dark. He fixated on the girl sagged against him and the rippling patterns that danced randomly across her skin, pricking against his palms when he touched it. He smoothed her hair and tried to be reassuring when she occasionally drifted to consciousness. Mostly she slept, as far as he could tell, mumbling nonsense or making small unhappy sounds when the truck bounced over a pot hole. It was good that she was asleep, he thought, better that she ride out the worst of her recovery as possible and give him a little extra time to wrap his head around what had happened. Not that he was in all that great a position to comprehend what he had witnessed. Clearly the theory behind the utilizing the MRI to eject the T-5000's contamination had been sound and the foreign matter in question had been very obviously ripped out, and yet that did nothing to account for the persistent crawl of artificial textures under her skin.

Pops pulled into a gravel drive that ended at a small single-story house with a dim yellow porch light shining out bravely. He exited the vehicle without a word, but made a detour to pick up the bags from the trunk, leaving Kyle to ease himself out of the back seat and gather Sarah back into his arms with minimal disturbance. It was new behavior for the Machine, maybe a peace offering, reconciliation for the words exchanged at the clinic, but maybe not. Kyle carried her inside and looked around the quaint interior. This was no bunker, no temporary retreat scratched out in the woods, for all its size this had been furnished like the home that occasionally came to him in confused flashes of remembrance.

"Down there," Pops nodded at the short hall, the lamp in the main room illuminating a door on either side of the short passage and a bathroom at the end. "On the left."

It was a tight fit; Sarah's stocking feet dragged along the off-white walls and he rounded the corner into what was obviously a little girl's room, refurbished. There was decorative paper on the walls in warm, gentle colors, a small wood vanity, and a long neglected dollhouse. The bed was full sized and he laid Sarah down on top of the fluffy white blanket and then went back to the main room where Pops stood, staring at some crude scribbled art taped to the refrigerator and turned off the lamp. In the dark he felt back to the hall and Sarah's room. Kyle settled himself on the floor and fell asleep using his arm as a pillow. He slept lightly, roused by the strange sounds of the new environment and Sarah's intermittent mumbling.

Predawn light filtered through useless lace curtains consigned him to wakefulness on a more permanent basis. Sarah slept on, so he left here resting and padded into the main room. Pops had shifted to the opposite side of the half-room that served as a kitchen, cellphone glowing in one hand and a fresh pot of coffee in the other. He poured it into two waiting mugs and slid one down the counter towards Kyle. "She will wake soon."

Kyle took the coffee and leaned against the counter, waiting silently with the Guardian. He was pouring a second cup when Sarah trundled out, swathed in the coverlet off the bed.

"Pops?" She gave the two men in the kitchen a bleary look and snagged Kyle's mug out of his hand. "What happened?" She adjusted her grip on the blanket and eased herself onto the stuffed paisley couch by the window.

Kyle replaced his stolen coffee with the lukewarm mug by the machine and crossed the room to stand in front of Sarah, Pops joining him seconds later. "What do you remember?" The Guardian led the conversation the Kyle felt grateful. It could be a manipulation tactic, the later Terminator models were able to do so intentionally, but not the T-1000. Then again, after the Guardian's impromptu upgrade, who really knew what it was capable of?

Sarah sipped her coffee, "Stargazing on the roof. Going inside the clinic."

"Guess you lost a few hours," Kyle put his hand on her blanket covered knee, then removed it when she didn't look up from the reflective depths of her coffee.

"Did it work? I feel different."

"The Magnetic Resonance scanner forcibly removed 94.8% of the T-5000 contamination in your body." Pops hesitated, "However, there was significantly more contamination than the initial scan indicated. I do not know if it was mechanical error of the bio-chemical makeup of the particulates, but their removal did lethal damage to your internal organs. An unexpected side effect was that new activity was stimulated in the remaining inert particles, repairing the damage done."

"Stimulated activity?" Sarah tried the words out and scowled, tossing the empty mug aside and standing abruptly. She extended her arms out in front of her, then lifted them hem of her shirt and stared at her stomach. The skin there rippled and she froze, paralyzed before dropping the material and darting for the door. Pop's reflexes were superior and he caught her by the arm before she could escape. "Let go of me!" The shriek tore form her throat and she thrashed against the iron grip.

Pops adjusted his grip on her, dragging Sarah bodily around to face him. "These stress responses pose a grave risk to the child you are carrying. Sarah Connor you must calm down."

Sarah sagged forward and then twisted like a fish, tearing out of the robotic hands and sprinted past Kyle, who made no move to stop her, and out into the bright summer morning.

Kyle took a moment to boggle at the Guardian and then his sense of priority kicked in. Going after Sarah was infinitely more important than explaining to Pops why that had been the exact wrong thing to say." Stay here," He ordered and then jogged out the open door after Sarah. She was still sprinting away, a tiny black figure against a field of golden grass, so he kept his pace steady and alternated between tracking her progress, a straight line away from the house, and keeping a weather eye on the ground for rodent holes that might cause him to wrench an ankle. That left him enough mental energy, as he ran, to process Pop's poorly timed announcement. Sarah was pregnant with what would presumably grow up to be John Connor and he was a father. The idea of being a parent caused a peculiar surge of elation he hadn't expected, hadn't realized that it was something he wanted until it was presented to him. It had never been an option in his last life; a soldier's existence was too volatile, too uncertain to provide any confidence in surviving the next day, the world was too dangerous to willingly bring another small helpless human into, even if he had cared to think of any women beyond Sarah's portrait. This time, though, there would be on Judgement Day, no war against the Machines and he would do anything, everything, to protect Sarah and their son.

He was closing in on her now, a relentless steady jog reducing the distance between them as her panicked sprint gave way to an exhausted stagger and after a quick glance over her shoulder, a defeated trudge. Kyle drew level with her and then slowed, matching her pace. He kept his mouth shut and let the silence hang between them, resisting the urge to say something stupid like 'are you all right'.

"I want to be alone," Sarah grit the words out between clenched teeth.

Kyle nodded at her statement and dropped back, letting her walk on ahead to where the plain dropped off abruptly to a river-carved ravine. He couldn't, or wouldn't, let her be fully alone, but it wasn't too much for her to ask him to back off and give her space if that was what she really needed.

Sarah walked a few yards further and then turned back to face him, arms clutched protectively around herself, fingers digging into the glistening abrasions from her struggle with Pops and the pixelated shadows danced between her fingers, healing and rebuilding the damage done. "I said I want to be alone!" The wind caught her angry shout and carried it away into the wide empty sky.

It was hard for Kyle to hold still, maintain the distance when every instinct screamed at him to go to her, gather her up in his arms and carry her off to a safe happy place. It's a stupid, useless thought, he knows no such place exists, and even if it did, Sarah would still be trapped with the thing living, more or less, under her skin. "Do what you need to do; I'm here if you need anything."

She stared at him, or perhaps through him, weighing his words against her own and seemed to come to a conclusion for she turned her back on him again and began to cry, huge gasping sobs that tore out of her throat and built to a wordless scream that was somehow so much worse in the quiet morning than any sound she had made during her ordeal in the medical clinic last night. Her legs buckled and she fell forward on her hands and knees in the dirt, her voice cracking in the wordless wail. Her voice grew hoarse and she groaned, slowly falling into quiet, shuddering breaths, dragging herself to the edge of the ravine and perching close to the edge, overlooking the rushing water below.

When she was settled by the edge of the embankment, Kyle took it upon himself to approach, taking a seat beside her a respectful distance away and stared out over the landscape on the other side of the narrow gorge, his attention focused on the young woman in her peripheral vision. She was watching the foreign bodies move under her skin again, pretty face swollen from crying and twisted in disgust.

"Is this how Skynet wins, by turning me into some half-machine thing, corrupting John before he's even born?" Her question came out a croak. "Whatever it costs, I can't let that happen."

"Hey, look at me," Kyle reached out, brushing his hand down the side of her face. "You don't have to do this by yourself. We tried one thing, it didn't work, so we'll find another way that does."

"What if nothing works?" Sarah turned her face towards him, expression desolate, empty.

"You and your old man built a time machine in the basement from scrap metal," Kyle tried not to sound too incredulous at her fatalism. "I think between the three of us we can come up with something to keep you from turning." It was the wrong thing to say but the realization came moments too late.

Sarah pounced on the opening, "And if there's nothing left of my humanity?"

The endless gold fields and bowl of blue sky were suddenly too large, too overwhelming to consider the question thrown in his face. He slid himself across the flattened grass and leaned his head against Sarah's shoulder, "Then I will ensure you do not hurt anyone else." He choked on the words, but the shaking tension eased out of her shoulders.

She sat quietly beside him, lost in thought, for some time longer and eventually nudged his head up and dragged herself to her feet. "We should go back, see what Pops is up to."

* * *

The truck was gone from the driveway when they made their way back to the house. Sarah searched every room twice, panic starting to rise in her chest before she felt the hard ridge of plastic in her pocket. She pulled the machine out and stared at the green light blinking in the corner and poked at the screen until the message from Pops loaded on the screen ' _Out to restock. Be back soon. :D_ '. Staring at the message, most notably the last two characters which held some meaning that she felt she should be able to interpret, Sarah wandered back into the main room where Kyle was inventorying the kitchen and fridge. "Anything good?"

Kyle stretched to his full height to reach the farthest recess of the cupboard and pulled out a dusty cardboard container of oats. He rubbed at the label and let out a low whistle. "Expired in 1997; how desperate are you feeling?" He chuckled at her expression of disdain and lobbed the ancient container into the trash. "Any news on Pops?"

Sarah hummed an affirmative and tilted her head to stare at the message. "Out for supplies, be back soon, colon-D." She read the message aloud.

"Yeah, well, we need them. It's anyone's guess how old the coffee is." Kyle gave up on the barren kitchen and the solitary can of coffee grounds. He glanced over her shoulder and rotated the phone in her hands ninety degrees. "It's a smiley face, you don't need to read it aloud."

"Weird," Sarah frowned at the gross simplification of human expression and turned the screen off, returning the phone to her pocket. "I guess we're stuck waiting until he gets back."

"You could call him, see if he'll be back soon."

She blanched, thinking of her parting words to him from this morning, the anger and misery bubbling back up. Sarah shook her head, "He'll be back the same either way." She didn't want to talk to Pops, or about him, either. It was stupid, it wasn't the first time he had been insensitive with a key bit of news, and she wouldn't be able to avoid him for long. With a huff she stalked back across the room and clambered onto the back the back of the couch, sitting sideways to stare out the window at the flat, boring landscape. So she was pregnant; it didn't feel any different, no ridiculous hormones, no glow of motherhood. It was probably too soon. She folded an arm across her stomach and scowled at the dirty black cloth. It was her own fault, of course, despite Pop's careful monitoring of her education on these things she wasn't entirely ignorant on the concept of prophylactics. It might have been inevitable either way, destiny playing out despite their best efforts to rewrite the script. It had been her choice; she had made it, now she would do her damnedest to live with the consequences. Still, it was worrisome, she hadn't anticipated her contamination, what could she do to protect the life growing inside her against interference from the machines? The couch sagged beside her and she looked down to see Kyle sitting by her knee, staring up at her intently.

"What's on your mind?" He ran his hand up along her calf, the part of her within easiest reach.

Sarah squirmed at the contact, entirely unsure if she liked it or not, or wanted him to continue or not. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"Yeah? Why's that?" He repeated the motion, short nails teasing through her denim jeans.

Sarah kicked her legs involuntarily against the sensation, "It tickles!" From the way his face lit up that was not a good thing to have said. He wrapped a strong arm over her thighs, rendering her lower body immobile, and set to work like it was his sworn duty. She let out an excruciating, tortured laugh and kicked against the brawny arm holding her down. He shifted his grip and then the hand that wrapped around her legs found the back of her other knee and her vision went white as he scratched lightly there. Convulsing with helpless laughter, she fought back, sliding down on top of him, pushing her legs out of his grip with her body weight and launching a counterattack against his exposed sides.

"Hey! That's not fair," Kyle bit back a surprised gasp as her nails found his ribs with instinctive brutality and she trapped one of his arms against his side. He thrashed against the relentless fingers, violent movements causing her to incrementally slide off his chest until she was trapped against the yielding cushions.

"You shouldn't start things you can't finish," Sarah gasped out between hysterical giggles that were starting to hurt down in her belly. It was false bravado, she could feel him shifting, regaining control as the heavy weight of his arm slipped around her shoulder and started testing her back for sensitive spots, but she had both her hands digging up into his ribs, moving north towards his underarms. Victory, whatever that meant in this context, was so close she could taste it, or maybe that was just the scent of his skin all around her again.

Kyle's dark chuckle broke into a groan when she scratched over a particularly sensitive area and he grabbed her wrist, caught it again when she twisted free, and secured it above her head with the arm he had wormed around her during their struggle. Slowly, lasciviously, he ran his free hand down her arm, teasing over her armpit and grazing down her ribs. "I think I just did."

She shivered under the caress, and looked up into his eyes, breathing heavily. Sarah arched into him, the weight in the air around them changing as he skated his fingers down her side again. His lips brushed hers and she had one last protest that had to be voiced, murmured against his lips. "I don't want to infect you."

The gentle pressure on her shoulder released and he wrapped the restraining arm around her instead. "I don't think you will."

"What if you're wrong?"

Kyle kissed her, so sweet and gentle it almost hurt, and then pulled back enough to look down at her, lips quirked in a tiny smirk. "We're already planning on finding a cure, anyway."

It was a dumb answer and Sarah resolved to be mad at him about it later. Right now, though, it wasn't a priority and she laced her fingers behind his neck and pulled him back down, dropping punitive little nips across his exposed throat.

Kyle braced his weight over her and tilted his head back, exposing his throat to the gentle savaging of teeth and tongue, groaning as Sarah dragged his shirt up over his head and wriggled further down to tease and taste the skin exposed there.

He tasted like salt and male musk, heady and intoxicating, and the small sounds that escaped from his throat made Sarah feel strong, made her want more. It felt like she had been awaiting this moment forever; to see him arched over her on arms that trembled with effort, sublime and beautiful in the bright light of day. She fumbled with the fly on his pants and his eyes snapped open, blazing down at her.

"Wait."

The order froze her in place, fingertips brushing his erection, constrained by heavy jeans and he rolled off the couch, kneeling on the floor as strong hands on her hips dragged her over and around until she slouched back, her feet planted comfortably on the floor. Abdominals protesting, Sarah eased on her elbows as he peeled her out of her pants, dragging them over her ankles and pushing them aside impatiently. Bare from the waist down and legs splayed out, she felt very exposed, very vulnerable.

Something must have shown on her expression, for Kyle's expression gentled and he ran a warm hand over her tense stomach, along her legs as his tongue flicked out briefly over his lips. "Trust me?" Lust-blown eyes made him no less serious as he waited her response.

"Completely," Sarah let him guide her back to the reclining position and felt him lift one of her legs over his shoulder. She wasn't sure what to expect, but the slow hot kisses along her inner thigh sent surges of want spiking through her veins and she thrashed against the palms holding her hips down as his mouth brushed her labia. She froze as soft warmth covered her clit, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, to do anything. The placement of her hands was a sudden and absurd problem as his tongue circled and teased. Was it okay to put them on his head? There really wasn't much purchase on the couch cushions. A finger pressing in, stretching and filling, banished the ridiculous thoughts and she gripped his hand where it rested on her hipbone, letting out a deep sigh of satisfaction. The overwhelming perfection stopped, she felt hot breath on sensitive flesh and craned her neck to meet his eyes.

"Okay?" He didn't blink, didn't break their stare as he nuzzled the juncture of her thigh and crotch.

The finger in her twitched and she convulsed, struggling to keep her eyes on his, intense as they were. "Fuck," She didn't care if it was impolite, her free hand wound through his short hair, encouraging him back. "Yes." She didn't say much else for quite a while, alternating between watching him work her over and bowing off the couch as he touched and teased her right on the edge. "Kyle, please!" Her fingers found his jaw and tugged him up, tangling her legs in his as he stood and pulling so he fell over her once more, tugging his pants open as he adjusted her hips beneath him and wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. Kissing him after that was different, a little perverse and very erotic, but still fundamentally kissing Kyle Reese under the unfamiliar taste of her own arousal and therefore excellent. He hitched one of her legs up under his elbow, hitting deep and hard so that she came before he did, digging her nails into his back as the release washed over her, wringing his name from the bottom of her soul as a long loud sigh. He shuddered against her moments later, squeezing her tightly against him before he too went slack and dropped on top of her. Sarah sighed in deep contentment, biochemical cocktail temporarily banishing the stress and worries eating at her and ran her fingers through his sweat soaked hair, over his heavily muscled back, tracing patterns in the cooling perspiration. "We should do that again, later."

Kyle snickered against her shoulder and nudged her over so he could lie beside instead of on top of her. "Later," He agreed peaceably, running his hands under her wrinkled tank top. "We should get up before your Pops gets back."

"Uh-huh," Sarah agreed and did not move. "Soon." Sooner than she liked she started feeling gross and sticky, so begrudged to drag herself off the couch for a quick, bracing shower and a change of clothes. When she came out, wet hair soaking down the back of her shirt, she slapped Kyle's shoulder lightly and jerked her thumb in the direction from which she had come. "You're up."

* * *

By the time Kyle emerged, she had finished dressing and was curled on the couch with one of the new phones as Pops unpacked several plastic bags in the kitchen. Sarah waved him over, "We're on the news – come see." Kyle settled beside her on the couch and she squirmed sideways, resting her back against his arm to provide a better view to the narrow screen. "It's dated from yesterday."

On screen a grave looking professional was speaking to the camera, "-And today the hunt continues for the terrorists wanted for detonating explosive on Oakland I-80 late Thursday evening." Three mug shots appeared on the screen behind her. "These criminals escaped police custody Friday morning and are suspected of being behind the destruction of the Cyberdyne headquarters in San Francisco. Suspects are considered armed and extremely dangerous. Cyberdyne spokesperson Jamie Yu has stated that the father-son power duo is still in shock from the destruction of their primary facility and the loss of their dear friend and mastermind, John Connor. However, the Channel Five news team received a special call from Mister Danny Dyson himself this morning with a message to air to these terrorists, whoever they are, wherever they are, and for the rest of the nation as well. In this time of national tragedy we are more than willing to oblige. Roll the tape!"

The screen faded to black and then slowly reformed as a low resolution video, obviously an amateur with a low quality recorder. It panned over a Cyberdyne sign and two gleaming towers rising majestically beside two additional skeleton structures creeping up over the view of the San Francisco Bay. There was laughter and the camera panned to a man with rolled up sleeves staring lovingly at the sight. He grinned whitely at the camera and gestured at the camera man. "Come on, Miles, for posterity." The camera jiggled and was adjusted awkwardly, looking down at the younger man who threw an arm around his subject's shoulders and matched his father's grin at the camera. "The site of Cyberdyne headquarters, run by Dyson and Dyson; watch out world, we're gonna make history here."

The image froze and then faded to a much higher quality recording, the same two men, much older and sadder, sitting on hard plastic chairs. The father, Danny, took his son's hand and spoke first. "This message is addressed to the perpetuators of the attack against Cyberdyne System's San Francisco office and the murder of my dearest friend, John Connor. I want you to know that you have hurt an old man; struck deep against a company that is building a future of hope and prosperity. I can only assume that these attacks were carried out due to the nature of our work, the fear that technological advances will displace workers, hurt families struggling to get by. It is human nature to fear change, and I understand that. However, it is also humanity's burden to struggle against that fear, to overcome that struggle and carry on."

The son took over the speech, leaning forward towards the camera. "You tried to take everything from us, undo the work of three lifetimes; bring us down so that we can never recover. You should know you have failed. You killed the greatest mind this world has ever seen, and we can never, ever replace John Connor in our hearts or in Cyberdyne." He choked, struggled manfully, and continued even as he blinked rapidly to keep tears from falling. "We will honor John by rebuilding what you destroyed. We will not live to let his life's work fall to dust, will not let your murder of our employees dictate our efforts to continue our commitment to technology and progress. And next time you come to us, we will be waiting." Sarah tapped the screen and the video stopped, with Miles Dyson's burning expression staring out at them.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: Thank you reviewers! Your encouragement makes all the difference, especially on the weeks where it's a struggle to get everything out of my head and uploaded in a timely manner (like this one).**

* * *

The video ended and silent fell as the listeners considered the Dysons' message. Sarah found her words first, tossing the phone down on her lap. "Well, shit," She summed the situation up succinctly and hopped off the couch, crossing to where Pops had left the cereal out on the counter. "Any idea how long it will take them to get Genisys back up and running?"

Pops frowned and handed her the milk. "It is dependent on if they were able to store full back ups remotely. We must visit the data center to confirm this and determine the extent of their contingency planning and infrastructure. The worst case scenario is that they are able to relaunch in six weeks, which would entail excessive investment in fail safes."

Sarah grimaced and dug into her breakfast. "Will we be able to run interference on that?"

"It is highly probable," Pops nodded, "Eat your breakfast." He moved off to the side, allowing Kyle access to the countertop and the food spread on it.

Kyle tried the cereal and then consumed it methodically. "What would they need in order to recover?"

He was musing aloud, but Pops responded anyway. "A base of operations, a sufficiently sized distribution network and an intelligence engine." He doodled three perfect circles in some spilled milk on the counter. "The first two will be trivial, a change in physical location and recruiting network specialists from other areas of industry to come and rework the transfer protocols for the amounts of data involved. The intelligence engine will take them longer; it was a single unit stored onsite and John Connor would have been the primary architect involved. With his death and the destruction of the prototype it could take them months before they have anything workable."

Kyle narrowed his eyes at the recitation, "You seem to know an awful lot about how Cyberdyne runs for a guy who was just on a construction crew."

If he understood the implication, Pops refused to take offense. "I never claimed to be 'just' a construction worker. Thirty years gave me many opportunities to infiltrate Cyberdyne and achieve high levels of comprehension in its organization and technology. Know thy enemy is a popular human proverb, Kyle Reese.

Kyle rolled his eyes at that and Sarah failed to suppress a giggle. Passing her empty bowl to Kyle, she jogged off to locate her missing boots. A brief expedition later, she found them on the floor of the truck, dragged them on and clomped back inside to hurry her companions along. If Pops was right, and he usually was, they really didn't have time to waste on minor interpersonal hostilities. To her surprise and pleasure, they were not engaged in some hyper-masculine posturing, but reviewing the collection of small arms Pops had squirreled away. It was, sadly, not up to his usual levels of excess. This was no bunker of armaments and the lack of restricted-use explosives proved it. She zeroed in on a Glock out of the short list of possibilities and pulled back the slide, checking first for a round and then for any dirt or rust that could cause it to jam or misfire. It was clean, so she wedged it under her belt and began filling the spare magazines form the box of 9mm bullets.

Kyle wiped his hands on a rag already spotted with oil and came to stand beside her, picking up each in the line and examining it. "Not quite your usual supply." He observed, throwing a glance over his shoulder to where Pops was stripping an ancient Kalashnikov.

"It was enough at the time," Sarah cast a fond look at her surroundings. "This was a nice place to live."

Kyle recalled the dollhouse and the child-sized vanity. "Were you here long?"

"Two years," Sarah tapped the filled magazine against the counter and picked up another. "Think I was eleven, maybe twelve."

"Twelve," Pops confirmed and Sarah wrinkled her nose at the interruption.

"Okay, twelve, and we had been moving constantly since my parents had passed – and then we came here. It was nice."

"The T-1000 chasing us had been trapped under a mud slide in Alaska," Pops took up the story. "We were able to remain stationary until it dug itself out and identified our location."

"We killed it when it found us, that time," Sarah said with great satisfaction. "The technology to kill it permanently was invented; that helped a lot. We ready to go?"

* * *

The data center was not located on any map, according to Pops, but he brought them to an enormous commercial energy plant and then unerringly navigated through the endless miles of solar panels and windmills that blotted out the plains for miles in all directions. The dirt road ended in a loop around an intimidatingly high fence enclosing a featureless concrete building the size of a small town. They passed an entrance on the North side of the fence, a tall solid chunk of metal, only slightly lower than the walls it was embedded in with a small gatehouse jutting out to the road in, and then nothing at all until they completed the loop back where they started; no back entrance, just one way in or out. Through the narrow opening on either side of the gate, Kyle could just barely make out a small parking lot with less than a dozen vehicles. "How many inside, do you think?"

Their resident Cyberdyne expert studied the area, "Ten security staff; perhaps eight technology personnel." He stopped the truck just past the ingress and turned it off, slung his rifle over his shoulder and climbed out to face a figure emerging from the guard house, heavily armored, but no obviously armed.

"You folks need to turn around, this is private property-"

Pops closed the distance to the guard and hit the man hard enough to crack the protective headgear and knocked him out before he could complete his initial warning. The gate blocking the entrance was solid steel and protected by sharp iron spikes jutting out of the pavement. He could crush the spikes down underfoot, but it took great effort to begin warping the metal barrier out of position.

Kyle slipped around the Guardian and bee-lined for the door the incapacitated guard had emerged from. He burst through the open door and found a second, similarly equipped man, rising to raise the alarm, kicking at unprotected knees. His opponent managed to avoid the worst of the blows and found his feet, pulling a short black baton from his belt and counterattacking. The baton whistled past his ear as Kyle ducked and glanced painfully off his shoulder, forcing Kyle to consider his options. The armor was annoying, it probably wouldn't stop a bullet at this distance, but gunshots would definitely alert anyone in the immediate area of their presence and he'd like to postpone that as long as possible. He squared off against the slightly smaller man and settled in for an unpleasant brawl. The baton, swinging in for a crippling blow to his hand, was a real problem. Even if it was nothing but a piece of weighted plastic it was still more than capable of grievous wounds. Kyle pulled his gun, the only weapon he had thought to bring, stupid of him, and blocked the blow with the reinforced polymer grip. A breeze puffed against his face as the weapon sprang back towards its wielder and Kyle took the moment of distraction to hit down at the extended elbow, the weight of the gun in his hand enhancing the attack's impact. Bone cracked, the man stumbled back, and the fight was over. The baton clattered to the floor and rolled to a stop at Kyle's feet. Keeping his gun trained on his wounded opponent, Kyle picked up the collapsible rod, it was too useful to leave lying around, and took a moment to wonder what to do with the man.

Sarah saved him too much thought with her entrance, slipping in around him and snapping a pair of restraints on the man before he could respond to her sudden presence, and didn't flinch when the man screamed as his broken arm was wrenched behind his back. With ease borne of practice, she relieved him of a keyring, badge, and his own set of hand cuffs. "You all right?"

Kyle tested his shoulder, "Good enough," It stung, but it still moved the way he needed it to, and that was all he wanted of it at the present moment.

Sarah accepted his assessment and stuck her head back out the door where Pops was finishing his battle with the gate. She paused briefly to snap the swiped restraints on the fallen guard outside and smirked up at her disgruntled father-figure. "We could have just gone through the guardhouse." She swung the stolen access card hanging off a lanyard around her finger and shook her head at Pops when he grabbed it away.

"The solution was not obvious at the time." Pops hung the access card around his neck and set the jagged remains of the gate against the wall and took point entering the enclosed space. Hanging close to the wall, he glanced studied the environment that had been hidden from sight and nodded at a small trailer-sized outbuilding a short distance away, insignificant against the mammoth cement structure overshadowing it. "In there."

There was no cover for them between the gate and the rickety wooden steps that was their destination and Kyle felt invisible eyes on them as he fell into formation beside Pops with Sarah in the rear guarding their backs. How much time did they need to break in and find Skynet in a place this large? Equally important: how long would it take for their intrusion to be detected and support called in? It was a disquieting thought; they were here and so they would just have to deal with whatever arose. The back of his neck itched as they climbed the rough wooden steps, narrow confines making it impossible to keep up interlocking fields of fire, or any decent formation, but at least the Guardian, tall and imposing in the front, was bullet proof.

The door was aluminum and it was unlocked; Pops pushed past it as though it was gossamer and sighted down the AK, sweeping all four corners of the room before stepping inside. Sarah squeezed around and frowned at the empty room. It was dark and dirty; crumbs and empty cans scattered over tables that managed to look sticky even in the darkness lit only by an ancient Coke machine. There was a dart board on an empty wall, scattered cheap plastic chairs and a calendar that was several years out of date. "This doesn't look like the right place."

Kyle shook his head, he had killed time on security detail in a hundred rooms just like this one. Something never changed. "There's a door." The door was half hidden in shadow and easily the cleanest thing in the room, covered in poly-lingual signs reminding occupants that food and drink were not allowed inside, that proper safety equipment was required at all times, and so on. He eyed the thumbprint scanner just above the handle. "Any bright ideas?"

Pops joined him by the door, standing uncomfortably close, and studied the access mechanism for what felt like a long time. The Guardian's hand rippled as he reached out and touched the small black panel and a buzzer blared as the door swung inward. Beyond the door lay chaos; a huge room lined on three walls with screens that stretched from floor to ceiling and rapidly cut between different views of the complex, both the grounds outside the cement enclosure and the endless ranks of computers within. The floor space was filled with desks holding yet more screens where men and women snapped orders into headsets or at each other, lights flashed on control panels and underneath it all was the dull roar of industrial fans. Kyle estimated that there were nearly twenty workers in the room, only three of which had noticed the invasion and were rising to intercept. He had to hope that the other seventeen, or so, were really as preoccupied by their duties as they appeared, and weren't going to trip any alarms before they had a chance to restrain them.

The fight was very short and very one sided. Security personnel they might be, but they were civilian style security, non-combatants without weapons or armor who once hit, went down and were inclined to stay down. The ones who were distracted had their headsets ripped off by Sarah; she brandished her pistol at them and herded them back with their fallen colleagues, watching grimly as they sank to their knees and obediently laced their hands over their heads. Kyle supposed that was a professionalism of its own and he stood watch with her over the, what, captives? Pops moved around the room, analyzing and assessing everything on display. "What do we do with them?" He raised the question when it seemed like they had the situation well in hand. One of the captives let out a low groan of fear and he racked the slide in the general direction the sound had come from. "Shut up. Don't move."

Sarah kept her weapon trained on the group, but craned her neck to watch the screens Pops was surveying and frowned at the unending ranks of identical hardware set ups. "Is Skynet in there?"

Pops clicked through several of the hundreds of live video feeds, noting the occasional technician wandering the floor. "We will need to go inside." He glanced back at Kyle and his sloppy row of charges. "Take one with us. We may require their assistance."

Kyle studied the rough collection of people in front of him, they all looked soft and weak, unwilling to risk injury through defiance. They probably would not have been among the survivors remaining after Judgement Day and he cringed away from that thought. It wouldn't help him now. He grabbed a woman halfway down the line, dragging her up by the collar of her company-issued polo-shirt, frowning at the wide splotchy face with dull, downcast eyes. "You, don't do anything stupid."

Pops came over to help oversee the process as Sarah rummaged around the drawers in the closest desk, crowing with triumph as she uncovered a large roll of duct tape. She made her way down the line, cocooning wrists and ankles with the heavy duty adhesive. Her task completed, she raised an expressive eyebrow at Kyle's selection and approached, peeling a long length of tape off the roll as she approached. "Hands out." There was an awkward pause before the woman complied, holding her wrists together and stretching them out in resignation to her fate. Sarah finished her task and slid the remains of the roll over her arm, letting it hang like an oversized, chunky bracelet. "We're good." She hopped over a prone form and joined Pops by the door opposite the one they had entered initially, probably the actual entrance to this facility, waiting until Kyle and his charge joined them before trying the handle. It was not locked on the inside and she eased out, gun first, peering out into a long white hall that ended with a high wooden desk and another heavy looking door. "Where is the attendant?" She barked at their hostage, pulling a tiny derringer out of her pants pocket to menace the other woman without looking away from the empty space in front of her.

The woman trembled violently under his hand on her shoulder and Kyle hoped she wasn't the sort who vomited from anxiety. It was already a blessing that she hadn't pissed herself during their initial invasion. "Answer the question, Marianne." He glanced at the name embroidered on the front of her shirt and ordered, close to her ear and she flinched at the unexpected proximity.

"Back there," Marianne jerked her head toward the line of captives in the back of the room. "Dumb bastard came in to tell us about some intruders circling the gate in person." She chuckled with a heavy dose of schadenfreude as they left the observation room and let the door click shut behind them, then fell quiet out in the hall, glancing between the two people in front of her. "Shit, you're those terrorists from the news."

"Yes," Pops agreed, "You should be very cooperative. We are armed and dangerous."

"Obviously," She snapped back and then clamped her mouth shut, probably appalled at her own nerve. It was hard to suppress his amusement and Kyle pushed the hostage forward again, bearing down on the door at the end of the hall and the bright square of sunlight filtering in from beyond.

Still taking point, with Pops close on her heels, Sarah reached the door first and tried the handle. "It's locked." She announced and ducked around the desk, contemplating the array of buttons and screens hidden behind the high top. "Pops?"

The Guardian switched with her and found the unlocking mechanism with his usual uncanny accuracy. Another buzzer rang through the hall and the door swung open. Sarah darted out, checking for guards or other wanderers but found nothing and she waited, vibrating with tension as the others joined her. "They'll probably work their way out in an hour or so," She stated, apropos of nothing, and slunk along the edge of the building they had emerged from, working on an angle towards the monolithic data center that was their primary target. "Probably trip every alarm available when they do." Pops clucked in mild disapproval and Sarah shrugged a shoulder in his general direction. "I'm not going to start killing unarmed civilians at this point in my life. Give it a rest and help me find the access point."

Despite her posturing, the access point was not difficult to find, just a grey cement door in a grey cement wall, but given away by another scanner embedded in the featureless wall. This one was different from the other and did not react to Pop's usual solutions. They were wasting time, the thought kept circling in her head and she turned on the woman Pops had insisted they bring along. "Open it."

"I can't," Marianne shook her head and shuffled her feet.

Sarah considered the statement. "You mean to tell me that a member of the security staff tasked with protecting this building can't open it at all? I don't believe you." She stroked the gun barrel down the woman's arm, tapping lightly against the exposed elbow.

The woman shuddered and shuffled away until she was pressed against Kyle in an effort to escape. "You need two people for the override. Ocular scan and RFID card for the lock. I'm not making this up."

Sarah smiled and returned her weapon to a less threatening position. "Show us." She watched as Marianne struggled to pull the plastic card from her shirt pocket with bound hands and then awkwardly contorted herself to hold the card to the reader and bow forward until her nose brushed a shallow indent in the wall. A light flashed green on the door. "Pops? Think you can manage that?"

Pops grunted, pulled out the card Sarah had taken from the guards at the front and copied the hostage's. A second light blinked once, green, and Sarah pushed the door open as Kyle relieved their new companion of her card and nudged her inside after them.

It was loud inside, the dull roar of air conditioners they had heard in the monitoring station magnified several times over, and despite all that it was still uncomfortably warm. A small bright LED illuminated their immediate area and cast faint shadows over the towers that stretched six feet in the air in every direction, disappearing into the darkness. Sarah crossed to the closest tower, worrying at her lower lip as she stared at the blinking blue lights along the racks of processors. "How do we even start?"

Pops rifled through the pockets of his leather jacket and tugged out a tangled USB cord and, after a minute's additional searching, found his phone as well. He plugged one end of the cord into the phone and connected it to the centralized support column of the tower Sarah stood before, shaking the cord out so he could hold his phone up comfortably and view the screen. He paged through several glowing interfaces, tapping in codes and passwords until he came to a stopping point. "I need her keys and phone."

"What do you need my stuff for?" Marianne shrank away as Kyle pulled the small dangly keychain and smudged phone from her jeans pockets and tossed them to Pops. "What are you even looking for?"

Pops ignored the shrill captive, and sorted through the ridiculous bobbles on the keyring until he found the access token that contained the input he was looking for. He tapped the number in and a moment later Marianne's phone beeped in his hand. He swiped it open and held the locked screen up to her. "Open it." It took her two tries, but she complied and he scanned the barcode that popped up on the screen with his own phone and went back to typing on his own device.

Sarah fidgeted, trying to watch all three directions for movement, "Will we need to do this for every one?" She couldn't begin to guess how many set ups like this one were contained in this facility, a thousand? A hundred thousand?

"They are all networked together," Pops balanced his phone on one of the protruding blades, "If there is any trace of the Genisys code markers, the software will find it and provide a directory location. It will go faster if we have more scans running." He pulled out a handful of tangled wires, "Give me your phone."

"You're looking for Genisys?" Marianne butted in as Sarah tossed surrendered her phone, not bothering to watch as Pops repeated the rather tedious access procedure, first with her phone, then with Kyle's, and lastly with Marianne's, plugging each device into a different tower. "All this over an operating system? Are you guys working for Apple? They're on their way out, man."

Pops checked the first screen he had set up, lines of text flashing by faster than even he could comprehend, the status bar on the top of the screen increasing minutely. "It will take approximately an hour to complete."

"What do we do with her?" Kyle jerked his head at Marianne, still alert and very much still their concern.

"Her abilities may play a key role in our exit strategy." Pops shrugged and turned to look into the darkness for any approaching technicians. "Hold onto her."

Sarah frowned at that, even for Pops that sounded ominous, and tried not to pace too much. She didn't like their situation, she didn't like the lack of cover, the one bright light in the darkness shining down on their position like a beacon, didn't like the needed wait while Pops ran his tests. In the distance, a light flicked on and gradually grew brighter. After a few minutes her eyes were able to process that the light was getting nearer, not brighter, probably motion activated as someone approached. They were quite literally right in front of the door, after all. "Incoming," She kept her voice low and pointed with her gun in the direction of the light. Instinctively, she moved to the cover of darkness, which had the unpleasant, though retroactively obvious effect of bringing another light on over her head. "Shit."

"Hello?" A man's voice called out, out of sight but originating from the approaching point of light. "Kelsie, is that you?"

Kyle pushed his captive after Sarah, taking the relative concealment behind the servers over the empty stretch of floor bordering the servers. "Answer him," He advised Marianne, relying on their noisy surroundings to disgust the command.

Marianne shot an unhappy look at the pistol in her peripheral vision, took a deep breath and hollered like she hadn't a care in the world, "Just routine security inspection, Mister Johnson. Nothing to worry about."

"Really? I don't remember seeing it on the calendar," The voice chuckled, "I guess it's not surprising, I've been so distracted lately. Never a moment to stop and catch my breath you know. Still, since you're here, would you mind getting the door? Had a rush order come in from the big guy himself yesterday."

Sarah waited, coiled like a spring, as the sound of footsteps grew apparent over the dull roar of cooling systems, heralding the arrival of the man himself. He moved slowly, pushing a hand cart piled high with taped cardboard boxes, looking around for the source of the reply. Heart hammering, she ducked behind the server, waiting for him to move past before springing out and reaching up, wrapping her hands around his unprotected neck. The technician was tall and skinny, surprised by the sudden weight around his neck, and he stumbled back, tripped over her boots, and dragged her down to the chilled ground. Training kept her hands around his neck, applying pressure to the carotid artery for thirty seconds until he went limp and she scrambled away from the body. He'd be awake in minutes, so she rolled him over and trussed him up, favoring speed over neatness and then slapped an additional piece of tape over his mouth. One hostage was better than two.

Pops dragged the man into the maze of servers and then joined Sarah where she was prying open the cartons the technician had been moving and peered over her shoulder at the contents within. "That is not good."

"What is it?" Sarah brushed away the packing peanuts and lifted the complex looking construct out of its container, holding it up for inspection. Her vision flickered, vertigo, and her skin crawled where it came in contact with the smooth cool glass.

Pops took it out of her hands and turned it about, "Twenty percent of an intelligence engine."

"John made copies?" Kyle looked ill at the prospect and the four unopened boxes beneath the open one.

Pops shook his head, "I believe this was an early prototype. It would never have worked as a standalone and," he rattled it beside his ear, "Does not have sufficient power to incorporate a quantum state drive, very rudimentary. But it is more than I expected them to have. It is good we are able to intercept it."

He passed it back to Sarah and the prickling sensation returned, a feeling equitable to dunking very cold hands in warm water, the sensation spreading down her wrists and up her arms. Her vision darkened again, an instant where grainy shakes played across her eyelids just beyond her processing ability. She blinked and it was gone and she hurriedly returned the device to its container, sealing it shut with a strip of duct tape. "Can we go yet?"

"Secure the crates," Pops gave the order and went back to the array of phones scanning the warehouse's digital contents, picking one up and studying the screen. "Be patient, Sarah, it will be done soon."

Soon apparently meant long enough to drive her completely up the walls. Sarah gave up every pretense of patience and paced freely, senses straining for any indication of approaching personnel, going back frequently to bring the black screens to life and stare at the slow progression. After several circuits, the screen finally displayed 'Complete' and she wanted to cheer. "It's done. Let's get out of here."


	8. Chapter 8

Pops cracked the door leading to the outside world and the raucous shrill of alarms joined the roar of industrial air conditioners. He glanced back at Sarah, who frowned at him. "This is not according to the anticipated timelines. Give me the crate." He transferred the AK to a one-handed grip and snagged the handcart, packaged anchored to it with several layers of tape, hoisting it onto his shoulder. "We must go now, before reinforcements arrive."

"And if they arrive before we get out?" Sarah glanced back, between Kyle and their hostage, chewing on the inside of her cheek. "We're not exactly equipped to go head on against SWAT this time."

"We have a hostage," Kyle shook his head, disagreeing. "That should gain us some leverage."

"It should," Sarah emphasized the second word and resigned herself to dealing with whatever came. "Can you see anything, Pops?"

"Negative," The Guardian looked back over his shoulder at the hostage security worker. "What is the estimated response time for your back up?"

Marianne flinched from the unblinking stare. "Uh, thirty, thirty-five minutes from the first alarm?" She cowered away from the pistol in her peripheral vision. "Oh God, please just let me go. I'll stay in here until you're gone; I don't want to get hurt!"

"No one here wants to hurt you," Kyle's voice was calm and soothing over the sirens, "But we are getting out of here. Can you help us?"

Marianne just gaped at him, helpless and beset on all sides. "You have my keys, just take my car. It's in the lot. Please, you don't have to-"

"They're here," Pops interrupted the hysterics. "Sarah, behind me; cover our sides." He kicked open the door, precious crates secure on his shoulder and marched out of the building.

"Shit!" Sarah cursed, shooting Kyle a quick, wild look of frustration, before darting out after the Guardian. It was all very well for Pops with his relative indestructibility to go marching out like that, but now that they had Kyle to take into consideration, the odds were high that someone squishy was going to get hurt sooner or later, especially since he was preoccupied with babysitting the useless civilian. She would just have to watch both their backs, he didn't seem the sort to watch his own in a crisis.

Pops led them along the featureless cement side of the building, angling towards the watch post they had broken into earlier. It was quiet, door sealed against their re-entry, but Kyle handled Marianne forward and she entered the codes to spring the locks and grant access to them once more. There were people at the end of the long white hallway, speaking frantically into their cell phones when Sarah and Pops burst through the doors. The three screamed in various registers of terror and dropped their phones, holding empty hands in the air before a command to do so could be given. It was an unpleasant deliberation, but Sarah tapped down the barrel of Pop's gun as he brought it up to aim at the workers in their path. "I said you can't shoot them."

"They are too dangerous, Sarah, it is an unacceptable risk to leave them at our backs. The mission here cannot be compromised."

Sarah barged ahead, forcing the cluster of terrified people apart. "There's no point to what we're doing if we have to kill every last person we meet along the way!" She bit back, rattling the door handle in front of her. "The Machines would hardly need to bother with Judgment Day if we killed every last person you wanted to."

"That is an irrational statement," Pops kept pace with her march of blind rage and pushed in the door to the control room, mechanical strength overcoming the material resistance of the lock. "You cannot let go of your rational abilities in these circumstances. Excessive emotional response is not useful in crisis situations."

Sarah glared around the ominously empty room and the darkened screens. "This conversation stopped being useful about five minutes ago, Pops. Get us some eyes on the outside, see if you can find these reinforcements anywhere." She jogged around the desks and down the narrow aisle leading to the back of the room and the door to the back area. As slowly as she could, she eased the back door open just enough to peak into the break room. "It's clear," She called back over her shoulder and let the door close until only a sliver remained, enough to fit one eye against to continue watching, nearly undetectable from the other side, she hoped.

Behind her, Pops set the precious cartons down by his hip and began booting up the closed circuit camera monitors. The humans in the room fidgeted impatiently as the screens slowly turned on, displaying the grounds and interior of the data center, all entirely empty. Pops frowned and typed into the console. "Something is not right here," He announced, "There is some interference-"

The door that connected the back room to the outside blew inwards with a wave of force that sent Sarah stumbling back several feet. "Get down!" She slammed the door shut and hit the locking mechanism with her fist, then launching herself over the closest desk and dropping behind it. The desks, as it turned out, were just long high tables that were open on all four sides, so she could see equally the lower third of the door in front of her or look over her shoulder at Kyle and Marianne, crouching for the meager protection.

Something metallic made a soft _tink_ sound against the door and another ear-splitting explosion shook the floor beneath her hands and crunched the door inwards. Sarah tried to think, to map the possible vectors of attack that could be made against them and the counter attacks that would get them out of this awful situation with minimal casualties to her side. Too bad she didn't have Pop's algorithmic processing capabilities of Kyle's years of combat experience, so all she could do was watch, wait and react when the opportunity presented itself. She heard nothing from the other side of the door until it clicked open and gunfire rattled overhead, peppering Pops with shiny silver welts where bullets struck him.

The Guardian turned away from the controls, shaking with the force of impact as three large caliber slugs ripped mercurial holes in his torso. He returned fire with the rusty old AK. "They have the car surrounded. We are cut off."

"How many?" Pops' suppressing fire kept their enemies pinned on the other side of the door and gave Sarah the opportunity to crawl forward on her elbows, until she was pressed up against the wall beside the door, just outside its trajectory of opening. She ignored Kyle's attempt to catch her eye and instead raised an expectant eyebrow at Pops. He flashed her four upraised fingers as she rose to a crouch, drew a knife from her boot and adjusted the grip on her pistol to compensate. She was tense and ready, but the fighters on the other side of the door didn't seem particularly inclined to try and push past the cover they had and it would be tantamount to suicide to try and approach them head on. Deeply, passionately, sincerely, she wished for a grenade.

Instead of her wish coming true, the door behind Kyle blew inwards and a cluster of men in black body armor swarmed in. That was apparently the signal for the group on the other side to come through and they barged in, big and bristling with heavy weaponry. From her vantage point she could see clearly as Kyle flinched at the noise, whirling low, dragging the hostage along until he was facing the new intruders and shot out the knees of the front-most fighter. The man dropped with a muffled scream and with him, any hope of negotiating their way out of this. He shot again, arm braced over Marianne's shoulder as gun barrels came down and Sarah took the initiative to shoot at the men breaching past, dropping one with a spectacular shot to the throat and taking another through the cheek. They noticed her then, unfortunately, but they were down two and Pops' sprayed the AK again, bullets deflecting off body armor, but still a sufficient distraction for a moment.

It was enough for her to close the distance to the closer man, slipping past the stubby snout of gun barrel and wrenching the weapon down and to the side. His finger, tangled in the trigger guard, spasmed before it broke and the metal scorched her hand as the bullet went wide and embedded itself in one of the monitors. Her opponent grunted in pain and tried to club her with the rifle, sling still tangled around his shoulder. A bullet grazed her shoulder and Sarah sidestepped the first blow, grabbing the bigger man by the sling. Using their combined momentum she stepped back but couldn't quite dodge the punch to the face and a knee to her stomach. Gunfire cracked again and her opponent shook and then went limp. Blinking stars out of her vision, she sliced through the tangled canvas strap securing the gun to its owner. It was long and heavy, definitely not suited to her preferences, but better than nothing. Jamming the pistol into the waistband of her jeans, she turned back to the conflict, finding her last opponent dead and Pops and Kyle pushing back against the remaining squad, flipped table providing some meager amount of cover, even punched through with holes. She wanted to join them, but training dictated that she edge out the other door, through the soot-blackened trailer with the blown in door and pressed herself just inside the door frame, straining with her peripheral vision to peer outside without making herself known.

Another squad of men, alert and staring right at the door were visible within her limited field of view, and she could just make out the high end of a large convoy truck parked over the ruined gate in the drive way. Heart in her mouth, Sarah edged back and retreated to the interior room to report. Her team had routed out the remaining enemies and Kyle pushed Marianne at Pops, jogging up to her and pressing a stinging kiss to her mouth. It ended too quickly, blood from her split lip smeared on his, and she ran her hands down his shoulders, finding a warm sticky patch on his shirt. "What happened? Are you hurt?"

"They hit the hostage; she's in shock." Kyle touched her lower lip with his thumb and bent down to pick up a rifle from one of their deceased assailants. "What about you?"

"It's nothing," Sarah prodded the wound with her tongue and winced. "There are more outside and they've parked a convoy on the drive. We can't get out that way." She glanced at the civilian, swaying on her feet as blood darkened her cheap ugly company shirt and dripped down her arm. "I don't think they'll be willing to negotiate, hostage or not."

Pops pressed down on Marianne's shoulder until she flopped obediently onto the floor. "How many trucks?"

"I only saw one," Sarah pushed some stray hair out of her eyes. "But luck hasn't really run our way so far." Kyle snorted and she crouched in front Marianne's vacant stare. "Marianne? Hey, I need you to stay with us just a little longer. Which car in the lot is yours?" The woman blinked, but otherwise didn't seem to hear the question, even when it was repeated. Sarah stood up in disgust, "Useless. Did she tell you which car was hers?"

Kyle dug in his pocket and pulled out the decorated key ring. He flipped past the ugly plastic figures and held up a black plastic panel. "This will help."

"If you say so," Sarah shrugged and knotted the loose canvas straps of the sling back together, letting the rifle hang off her shoulder for the moment. Another piece of technology she didn't understand. "Can you fix what was wrong with the display, Pops?"

Pops stepped around the woman slumped by his boots and scavenged the remaining weapons from the fallen guards. "That should not be a priority at this time. The fighters outside cannot mean to wait forever. Forcing confrontation at this stage would be optimal; once they know the result of our altercation in here, they will send for more."

"If they haven't already," Kyle put in and returned the confiscated keys to his pocket. "No point waiting around, either way."

He looked tense and unhappy to Sarah, the small muscles around his mouth and eyes twitching as he looked around the wreckage of the control room. She put a hand on his arm and felt him jump before relaxing under her touch. "Sounds good to me." She waited for Pops to settle the crates stolen from the warehouse on his shoulder before slipping back through the door into the hot back room. Kyle and Pops followed as she crept across the linoleum tiles and approached the square of yellow sunlight shining in through the gaping hole where the door to the outside used to be. "Pops, take center; I'll hold left. It's a good spot for interlocking fire."

Pops nodded his approval as they adjusted position accordingly. "That is an excellent assessment; let us move at the count of three." Sarah moved her lips along with the count, it was an old familiar ritual tht provided some degree of comfort before jumping into the dangerous unknown. "One, two, three."

At the final count they moved into the light, weapons firing in a wide spread and mowing down the restless soldiers alert, but not expecting an organized counter-attack. They were professionals, though, and so did not panic or scatter as the first rank absorbed the lethal shower of lead and powder. They split down the middle and scattered to either side, out of easy killing range. Sarah raised her head from the sights and looked around the abandoned yard. They had taken out maybe a third of the men lined up in reserve here, but she could see a second truck in the road past the first one she had observed, which could only imply yet more people waiting to kill them. At the very least there were still at least a dozen in the immediate vicinity whom they had just attacked. "Parking lot!" She jerked her chin at the distant square of asphalt and let Pops and Kyle lead the way, backing up their rear. The side of the building she could see was empty, though she would have sworn that would have been the place for those in the killing field to retreat to for an immediate withdrawal. Clearly the soldiers, police, guards, whatever they were had thought differently, for despite her attentiveness she saw no one coming up behind them along that side. Behind her, Kyle and Pops picked up speed, and she turned halfway, jogging to keep up with their longer strides as they veered away from the building toward the half-filled lot.

Pain exploded in her calf and Sarah stumbled, turning with the force of the impact. It took all her will, every ounce of stubbornness she possessed to stay on her feet, to ignore her leg in favor of staring down the iron sights and letting out a controlled burst of fire at the faint shine of sunlight on a gun barrel poking around the side of the building. Another shooter, position unknown, missed his shot, tearing a groove in the denim over her hip. "Snipers!" She grit out, "Run!" They didn't comply with the alacrity she wanted, of course, opting instead to turn and try to spot the shooters she could not see. Pops had his enhanced scouting optics, and he did not need excessive amounts of time to line up the shots that removed the less sheltered man from the fight.

Sarah stumbled past Pops, ducking under his arm and taking limp, shuddering steps towards the lot. They had to get out, or a calf wound would be the least of her concerns. Kyle grabbed her arm, hard enough to bruise, and tossed her over his shoulder in a practiced fireman's carry. It was nothing at all like being carried by Pops, none of the immutable protective properties of the Terminator physiology, but at least she could see, draped over his shoulder, and even if her accuracy was shit with the jolting motion of his jog she could at least shoot at the mob of armored bodies in the distance, thundering towards them. There were, at a glance, almost twenty of them, and the only blessing was that, just like Sarah and Kyle, they could not shoot accurately while running forward. Pops, running backwards and to the side, had no such limitations.

Kyle dropped his gun as the ground beneath his feet changed from turf to asphalt and fumbled in his pocket for the keys. He cursed, punching buttons on the remote until the lights of a bright blue Dodge pickup blinked on. The cab was tiny and he cursed again, rolling Sarah off his shoulder into the bed of the truck. He slammed the door open and threw himself into the driver's side, revving the engine as Pops leapt smoothly up beside the girl.

"Go for the west side of the fence," Pops shoved his hand through the rear window separating the truck's cab from the rest of the world.

The truck jolted as Kyle accelerated off the pavement and onto the grass, soft ground slowing their progress as he aimed for a distant section of fence. "What's the exit strategy?" He shouted to try and make himself heard over the wind around them.

"I will take care of it." Pops promised and took aim at the distant figures, breaking off their mad dash on foot to acquire pursuit vehicles.

Beside him, Sarah stirred with a groan and dragged herself to a sitting position. It was good to be sitting down, her left leg was both terrifyingly numb and burning with fiery pain. She still had her stolen gun in addition to Pops' surplus armaments, and took an unused one, watching down the sites as they rounded a corner and the men disappeared from view. Slitting her eyes against the stinging wind, she turned and watched the fence grow in front of them.

"Watch the rear." Pops ordered, turned away and vaulting over the roof of the cab, landing heavily on the hood. The truck shook under the impact of his landing, but the jolting did not affect his balance as the liquid metal of his right arm reshaped itself to a cutting edge. He gave the confused and concerned Kyle a brief nod over his shoulder before jumping down in front of the grille and running ahead of the moving truck. The arm lengthened as he ran, gaining enough space in front of the vehicle to make three long arcing cuts, shearing through the razor wire, iron anchors and reinforced chain link. A few feet ahead of the truck he pushed through the cut out, curving off to the side and swinging up into the passenger side of the car as his arm reverted to its human shape. "Go west." He ordered the driver.

"Anywhere in particular?" Kyle spared a quick glance to the rearview mirror, watching the black shape that was Sarah crouched in the back and behind her, the rapidly shrinking compound.

"Away from here."

The black convoy trailed them for nearly an hour before Kyle was able to lose them in a medium sized city of unknown name. They shot out the other side, blind to speed limits, and swapped to a rental car the next town over, another SUV, big enough to be practical for their purposes, for the boxes and weapons to fit in the back and for Sarah to stretch out, slightly more comfortable, in the back seat. She was exhausted, listing against the window as Pops took over the driving and took them further north and west into the heart of Montana.

* * *

Night fell and they stopped in a town that was barely more than a gas station, convenience store, and Motel 6. "Wait here," Pops ordered and swung out of the car, tramping in towards the office. He returned a few minutes later with the key dangling in his meaty hand. "Come along." He went around to the back of the car and lifted out the battered hand truck, placing it on the ground and wheeling it towards the most distant room.

Kyle eased out of his seat, stretched his back until it cracked, and then went to help Sarah. She lifted her head and blinked up at him as he opened the door she had propped herself against, wrapping an arm around his neck as he slid her out of the back. Glancing inside, he winced at the dark stains on the upholstery and tightened his grip on her waist.

She must have read something in his expression because she tapped his cheek with a finger. "We did what we had to. Let's go inside."

He supposed they could argue about the requirement of that particular mission once they were inside, sometime distant time after they had gotten cleaned up and maybe had a good meal. They had left everything in the little cottage in South Dakota, semantics would have to come later. She held tight to his neck as he swung her legs free, pressing her face against the material of his shirt, stiffed with dried blood and secured his grip under her thighs. It was a quick march to the door Pops had left open behind him, and Kyle was happy to kick it shut behind him and set Sarah down on the closest bed. He ignored Pops, preoccupied with the cellphones in a corner, and ran his hands from her knee, down the blood-crusted denim of her jeans and pushed the hem up. Sarah hissed and kicked out with her good leg involuntarily. His shoulder absorbed the impact, weak as it was, and he let it fall with a grimace. "Sorry."

Sarah shook her head, "It has to be done."

Kyle helped her settle a little higher on the bed and more slowly rolled the material of her pants up, pausing where it had dried against the rent flesh to work it loose before continuing up. He found the wounds, or what remained of them, halfway up her calf muscle, a small entry on the left, already latticed over with regenerating tissue, and an ugly knot the size of a plum, red and grey and crawling with wormy purple capillaries and pulsating with microfluid activity. His stomach turned violently, and as used as he was to the wounds sustained in wartime, he thought he might be sick. He mastered himself and tore a strip from the sheet on the bed, winding it over the sight. "You scared the shit out of me, Sarah."

She couldn't look away from the exit wound as it was covered in pale blue cotton, chewing her torn lip until blood welled up again. "I made a stupid mistake, I paid for it. Next time I'll know better. At least we got what we needed." She nodded over in Pops' direction.

Kyle grunted, ambivalent to that opinion. "We'd better," He checked her other leg, the bruises on her knuckles, the burn on her hand, the gouge on her hip.

She stilled his hand as he began the check all over again, squeezing his fingers. "I'll be okay," Sarah insisted with a tiny smile. "Take care of yourself."

"There's nothing to care for," Kyle admitted, rueful. Once again, he had escaped relatively unscathed and it felt ridiculously unfair in some greater cosmic sense, or perhaps he was simply failing in his mission to keep Sarah safe. He sat on the edge of the bed and she scooted closer, her thigh pressing against his back, her arm brushing his. It wasn't cuddling, he wasn't sure he could handle any more physical affection while the creepy old robot was in the room, distracted or not, but the contact was reassuring, healing.

"You sure?" She stretched up and dragged a fingertip down a faint pink line of scalded skin. "You seemed a little jumpy earlier."

Kyle caught her questing fingers and kissed the puffy bruise over her knuckles. "I'm not a big fan of hostage situation," He admitted, "They're too difficult to control." He glanced at Pops again, and refrained from commenting that it hadn't been a fantastic idea to begin with. "And I really don't like being caught in pincer movements like that; it was one of Skynet's preferred tactics during the war. If they corner you, pin you down like that, you either have to win on both fronts, at the same time, or die."

"Maybe we could have talked our way out of it. We had one of their people." Sarah tugged on his hand, encouraging him to lie down beside her, staring up at the beige stucco.

Kyle obliged, tucking an arm under his head and wrapping the other around her shoulders. "Maybe," He didn't believe it, personally, there had been no considerations that he had seen made for Marianne's safety by the men sent to intercept them. "I wonder what their orders were."

Sarah plopped her head on his chest and looked up at him from under her eyelashes. "Does it make a different?"

"Not really," He ran his fingers through her hair and looked up as Pops' heavy footsteps approached. "What're the results?"

Pops held up the devices in a fan, the screens displaying red and green gibberish. "Skynet."

Sarah bolted upright at that, grabbing the phone and swiping around the screen. "Is it sentient?"

"It is not fully formed," Pops tossed the remaining devices onto the counter across the room. "The identification signs are there, but it is not a full code."

"Is it notes? Development iterations?" Kyle sat up and frowned at the screen over Sarah's shoulder. He couldn't made heads or tails of what he was seeing, it was entirely different from the Skynet code he had basic familiarity with.

"No," Pops pried the phone out of Sarah's hands, frowned at the display, and pocketed it. "It's just unassociated bytes, miscellany. It is unlikely anyone could reconstitute the full code if they could find all the pieces."

"That's something, right? They don't have the code, they'll need time to reconstruct it." Sarah narrowed her eyes at the confiscation.

"It's strange," Pops disagreed. "I did not anticipate this option. I do not know how to model this sort of fragmentation. I will need time to process it."

"How much time?" Sarah demanded, "What do we do next?"

Pops took a full minute to process her question. "Our first step will be to resupply. There is a shop in the next town over suitable for our needs. Within my current model, we will need to intercept one of the Cyberdyne engineers to more fully understand what we are dealing with at this time. However, I will spend the rest of tonight creating a model based on the new data downloaded from the warehouse. You will be updated accordingly." He stomped back to the table, removed his leather jacket, hung it neatly off the back of a chair, and sat down.

"Fuck," Sarah flopped back on the quilt, and rubbed her hands over her eyes. "He's never done that before."


	9. Chapter 9

Sarah slept badly, dreams half remembered dragging her back to consciousness over and over until the sun rose and she gave up on the whole thing. She rubbed her eyes, and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Everything hurt, she was dirty and gross and had nothing to change into; but those were problems she could deal with. On the other side of the room, Pops sat exactly where he had positioned himself last night, and the sitting part worried her. In the eleven year she had lived with him, he had never sat, it was part of the whole nuclear power core and never needing to sleep or be tired or do any of the inconvenient things that plagued ordinary carbon based lifeforms. She didn't think it was an affectation, either.

Behind her, Kyle caught her wrist as she tensed to stand. "Let me look at it first?"

Glancing over her shoulder, she met his eyes, bright and sincere. It was a request, not an order, and she thought she might love him for it. With a sigh of feigned resignation, Sarah scooted back onto the bed. "Look, then."

She nudged him with her elbow and he rolled to his feet with easy grace, carding fingers through his hair until it stood wildly on end. "I hate sleeping in boots," He mumbled and squatted down in front of Sarah. His fingers were gently and deft as he rolled the denim up over her knee and frowned at the bandage he had tied over the gruesome injury last night. The pale blue cloth was pristine, unstained by blood or sub-cutaneous fluid. "Huh," Kyle sat back on his heels and glanced at Pops' back. "Think he can hear us right now?"

Sarah shrugged; what did it matter either way? She had learned the hard way when she was a little girl that it was impossible to keep secrets from a hyper-intelligent, perpetually vigilant protector

Kyle didn't share her experience, that she knew, but he seemed to catch on to her thoughts and nodded. "We'll discuss it later, then." His eyes flicked to the dirty cotton covering her abdomen and then returned to working free the knots on her bandage. "How do you feel?"

"Like I need a shower and a change of clothes," Sarah groused and her stomach rumbled. "And breakfast."

Kyle nodded in agreement with all three things. "Just another minute and we can go check those out." He freed the cloth covering with a final tug, wadding the strip of fabric in his hands, then tossed it to the side and ran his large hands over her calf, glancing up at her face.

"How does it look?" Sarah twisted, impatient to see for herself, but unable to contort her torso into a position that would let her view the wound in her current position.

"It doesn't hurt?" Kyle queried, pressing his palm over the rigid red and black lattice that had grown over the missing chunk of muscle overnight. He pulled his hand away and studied the stinging pink indentations they left on his palm.

Sarah considered the question, "Not exactly." She struggled to find an accurate description. "It's a little sore, like I was standing on that foot for a really long time." Tugging her leg out of Kyle's gentle grip, she pulled her leg up and ran her fingers over the exit wound. Her expression froze at the alien sensation there, and she forced her leg into a position where the site was bared for both of them to see clearly. "What the fuck? What's happening to me?"

Looking at it made Kyle's skin crawl, it was much worse to look upon in daylight than when he had made his preliminary examination; it hadn't looked to horrendously artificial. Now it was clearly a grid of sharp right angles, threaded through with hair-fine blood vessels that pulsed visible to the naked eye. "I'm glad you're okay." He glanced back at Pops again, still motionless at the table.

"You call this okay?" Sarah raised her voice, "This is definitely not okay!" She rolled away from him and scrambled off the bed. Stumbling, leg heavy and somewhat unresponsive, she caught her balance against the wall and limped across the room. "Pops? Pops! You wake up right now, old man!" She caught herself on the broad shoulders that came halfway up her chest and shook him violently. "Do you hear me? I said wake up!" She screamed at the unresponsive Guardian until her voice cracked and fell back to a normal register. "That's an order." There was no response and she sagged against him, thumping his back with unrestrained frustration. "Asshole."

Kyle approached slowly, making a vague affirmative sound in his throat, and offered her his hand. "Let's go get supplies, okay? You'll kick his ass that much better once you've had breakfast and a shower."

Her lips twitched, a smile despite all the fear and anger. "I don't want to kick his ass," Sarah pouted, but pushed herself away from the unresponsive Guardian and retied her hair in a ponytail. She picked the pockets of the leather jacket draped over Pops' chair, coming up with a keyring and wad of cash. "You're being awfully calm about this whole thing."

"I could run screaming through the streets if you prefer," Kyle made a halfhearted grab at the keys as she tossed them in the air, but Sarah's reflexes were sharp. "But that would go against all my reasons for being here."

Sarah stuffed the keys and cash into her pocket and unlocked the door. "You're not chained here, you know." She rubbed her bare arms as the cold morning air hit. "This can't have been what you signed up for."

Kyle tugged the door shut behind him and kept pace with her back to the car. "I signed up to deal with whatever happens." He swung into the passenger seat as Sarah clambered behind the steering wheel and dragged the rear view mirror down to her level. "I never thought this was going to be an easy assignment."

His quiet, self-deprecating chuckle eased something tight in Sarah's chest, and she threw the car into reverse, backing out of the dirt lot in front of the motel and speeding down the empty highway in the bright morning. "So what didn't you want to say where Pops could hear you?"

Kyle hesitated, then spoke, "Don't you think it's a little weird that your Guardian didn't stop to check on you once after you'd been shot yesterday?"

Sarah opened her mouth, snapped it shut and stared hard at the road disappearing into the horizon before them. "Just because he didn't say anything doesn't mean he didn't check. I don't require constant reassurance that I'm not about to drop dead, you know."

"There's a difference between constant reassurance and making sure you don't get left behind when your leg gets shot out from under you." Kyle frowned at the scenery outside and touched her hand where it lay on the armrest between them.

Sarah squeezed his fingers and flashed him a quick smile. "He didn't need to, you had it under control. He kept the Intelligence Engine from falling into Cyberdyne hands. I think it was an adequate division of labor."

"'Adequate' is a funny description," Kyle snorted, "I'd hate to see what you thought unsatisfactory looked like." He squeezed her hand again before she took it back.

"Ha-ha," Sarah rolled her eyes, "I thought you and Pops had come to some sort of understanding, anyway."

"We did," Tires squealed as she took a hairpin turn and Kyle tightened his grip on the armrest. "But that was about a different topic. If you're okay with how it's worked out, then I'll drop the subject, but something about this feels off."

"He was sent back to protect me. He's on our side." Sarah closed the conversation as they pulled into the small parking lot of a gas station.

A gambling man, Kyle put a heavy hand on Sarah's shoulder as she moved to unlock her door and exit the vehicle. "Is he really? Or is he on the side of whomever sent him back?" Kyle removed his hand as she flashed a lightning-quick glare at him and hopped out of the car.

It was an ugly, insidious suggestion and Sarah did everything in her power to ignore it, and Kyle, as she marched into the small convenience store attached to the gas station. It was a lucky find, the breakfast sandwiches still warm and not particularly soggy. She tossed them on the counter beside the one open register and added an assortment of non-perishable snacks and bottles of water while Kyle put together two coffees from the urns out along the back counter. The groggy, apathetic teen behind the counter didn't blink at her erratic behavior or filthy appearance, just took the bill and counted out change with the minimum required effort before going back to his phone. Kyle crowded her space, just a little, bagging their purchases and Sarah leaned her elbows on the counter. "Excuse me," She waited, fixed smile fading as the youth tookhis time to look up. "Are there any surplus stores around here?"

The attendant blinked languidly, taking time to process the request. "Uh, yeah, next town over down the highway."

Sarah nodded a brusque thanks and gathered up her purchases, cold shoulder wearing out as she stalked into the sunshine and then had to juggle egg and cheese sandwiches, boiling hot coffee in flimsy paper cups, and plastic bags of groceries with Kyle's assistance. The last of her bad temper disappeared as they ate in relative quiet, disrupted only by the occasional car speeding past on the highway. His arm was warm against her shoulder and she leaned into him. It wasn't Kyle's fault that he was suspicious, she could only imagine what his life had been like prior to 1984. Nothing she had heard led her to believe there had been anything pleasant about it beyond his friendship with John and the thought made her unaccountably sad.

"I'm sorry I upset you." Kyle's words broke into her ponderings. "I was, I am, worried. About you, our son, the end of the world." He sighed into his coffee, then took a drink, grimacing at the scorching heat.

"Hey, it's okay," Sarah managed to form her mouth into a convincing smile. "Pops is… Pops. He's not evil."

Kyle shook his head, "He's a Machine; they're incapable of 'evil'." He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, giving Sarah plenty of time to pull away. "Shit, you're freezing."

"It's not so bad, now," She wrapped her hands more tightly around her hot drink. "We better get moving and find that store. I'd like to be back when Pops wakes up." Snorting inelegantly, she added, "Whenever that is." Sarah climbed back into the truck and cranked up the heater. "I think Skynet sounds pretty evil."

Kyle considered the non-sequitur, connecting it back to their conversation from thirty seconds ago. "There's no inherent moral code behind artificial intelligence, not according to any of the accepted theories from 2029, anyway. If all you can do is follow pre-programmed algorithms and outcome-category-analysis models, then everything you do is pre-determined by the original programmer; they're the ones who carry moral culpability."

Sarah felt like the vast majority of that went over her head, but nodded anyway as they pulled back onto the highway. "Like Asimov's laws of robotics."

Kyle considered the comparison, "Same general idea, I guess. And none of that is to say that what humanity's suffered at the hands of the Machines is okay, everything they've done to us is objectively really horrible." He couldn't suppress a shudder at the memory. "A few crazy bastards figured out that if you could incapacitate a Terminator without damaging too much of the physical structure, you could pry open the skull and remove a chip about the size of your thumbnail. Replace it with a bit of wire and a transmitter and you could control that unit directly." He shifted in his seat, "We owed our victory against Skynet to those guys and their robots. It really made me re-evaluate what we were fighting." He blew out a long breath and Sarah reached for his hand, squeezing his fingers. "Whether Pops is good or bad depends entirely on whoever sent him back. I guess that's the point I'm trying to make."

Sarah scrunched her nose as she thought about it. "He's had years to do something bad and he's never done so. Not once. I figure if he hasn't done anything yet, he probably never will. If that assumption is proven wrong I'll figure it out when I get there."

His thumb stroked along her knuckles. "We'll figure it out," Kyle corrected her and Sarah didn't even try to suppress the smile that bloomed on her lips.

The surplus store was just opening up when they finally found it, hidden around back behind a shiny new ranching store. Exploring it was good fun, especially since they eventually found everything they needed, including an emphatically incurious attendant. There were sturdy dark clothes in the approximate right size, thick canvas jackets, duffels, and cast off weaponry dating back to the Gulf War with the necessary ammo still sealed in dusty green crates. Sarah resisted the urge to change right in the store; clean clothing would be that much nicer after she had showered. Still, it was something concrete to look forward to and she fidgeted impatiently as the old man, ex-Marine by the faded blue ink on his arms, rang up their selections and had the audacity to wink at her as he surrendered the old ARs in their hard plastic cases. "You kids be good now. I haven't made the news in forty-some years and I've no desire to start again now. Understood?"

The old man barked at them and it triggered something in Kyle, an old memory, an old friend and he snapped a salute. "Yes, sir!"

The clerk, such as the word applied, narrowed his eyes at Kyle and then relaxed, reading some sign known only to him. "Infantry?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good boy," The old man nodded, one kindred soul to another. "You know what we called you lot in the Marines, back in my day?"

"Same thing they call it now, sir?"

The geezer grinned and shook Kyle's hand. "Won't wear your ears out repeating it, then. You and your lady-friend stay safe, now."

Sarah waited until they were out of the store and on their way home before asking, "So what do the Marines call the Infantry?"

Kyle snorted through his nose, "I have no idea. Marines fell out of use pretty quickly once Skynet was controlling 91% of functioning military hardware. I thought it made a good exit line." Sarah snickered at his self-satisfied smirk and they finished the ride him in peaceful camaraderie.

.

.

She bee-lined for the shower when they arrived back at the motel. Her leg was starting to hurt significantly more than it had earlier and Sarah was forced to admit, to herself at least, that she probably should have asked Kyle to drive them back here. Still, she had gotten home with both body and pride intact and the warm water would help heal the rest of her non-physical ills in the short term. The spray stung where it hit her skin and she stayed under the water just long enough to scrub off the blood the grime before limping out and cocooning herself in a towel. She got no peace even in that for someone pounded on the door loudly enough to make her jump in surprise and lunge for a knife that wasn't there.

"Sarah! Hurry it up! Pops is awake!" Kyle shouted and she yanked the door open, pushing past him and dripping water in her wake.

Pops was definitely up, moving around the counter where the boxes containing the intelligence engine were where he had left them. "I have had an epiphany." He declared as Sarah padded into the room. "We have enough information gathered here to observe Cyberdyne remotely. With proper hardware we can run an optimized search without the logistical risks and requirements of being on site."

"That's your epiphany?" Sarah tried not to make her question come out too obnoxious, but failed if Kyle's smirk was anything to go by. Pops gave her a flat, unimpressed look; definitely obnoxious then.

"No. That is merely our next step, to be acted upon once you are done dressing yourself. The epiphany is that once we are in a position to observe Cyberdyne remotely, we can use their internal archives to modify the acquired intelligence engine hardware and run a reverse engineering analysis to determine where the original release went wrong."

Kyle thought about the plan for two entire seconds before voicing his opinion. "That's a terrible idea. How do you know it's not the improved version that kicks off Judgement day?"

"Because I was not here to build it."

"If it's a different timeline then how would you know?" Kyle challenged.

"You do not know otherwise." Pops countered, reasonable.

"Maybe not," Kyle's concession surprised Sarah. "But, man, you got to know this has 'Bad Idea' written all over it. The last thing humanity needs is two Skynets loose. We might as well launch the missiles ourselves at that point."

"That is hyperbole." Pops turned to Sarah, "What is your opinion, Sarah Connor?"

Sarah glanced between the two men. "I think your idea puts us in an arms-race with Cyberdyne, one where they have all the advantages." She thought through her next argument carefully before continuing. "Our goal is to stop Cyberdyne from rebuilding Skynet and I don't really see how trouble-shooting what they did wrong achieves that goal. Could we use that remote surveillance you mentioned to sabotage their current efforts? That might be better."

"Definitely better," Kyle approved.

"It will depend on the security measures they have in place." Pops responded with a sharp look at Kyle. "But it is an adequate strategy, if it is your preference."

"It is," Sarah adjusted her grip on the towel to dig through the pile of bags on the unused bed and began pulling on fresh clothes. "Do we need anything for this surveillance of yours? It's a hike to any sort of shopping center from here."

"No," Pops studied her antics as she shimmied her jeans on under the towel. "There is a place I know of outside Seattle that will fulfill all our needs for this stage of the project."

"Seattle?" Sarah grimaced, "Why are all your hideouts an eight hour drive away from our current location?" She waved Kyle off as he opened his mouth. "Go shower, I won't let him leave without you." The act was maintained until the bathroom door clicked shut behind him and the sound of running water filled the room. Sarah dragged her shirt on and sat down on the bed, her elbows digging into her knees. "You scared the shit out of me, Pops. What was that?"

The Guardian looked slightly ashamed. "In spite of my material upgrades, I am still running on the original model 1000 nuclear battery cell. It still has many years of operational capacity left but its output is capped to ensure longevity. Last night's analysis of the data we extracted from Cyberdyne took all my available processing power." He reached out and patted her wet hair like she was nine years old all over again and in need of whatever tactile comfort her could provide. "I am sorry you were worried. It was not my intent."

Sarah smiled up at the grizzled old face, full of trust and love. "It was weird; you made Kyle bug out a little. He warned me to be careful of you."

Pops patted her head again before pulling his arm back and letting it dangle awkwardly at his side. "You should be careful," He agreed. "You are a reckless girl sometimes, my Sarah, and we will not be able to protect you from everything."

She rolled her eyes at that; the speech hadn't changed significantly in the ten years he had been reciting it. "You're talking about yesterday. What I did was a rational decision, given your various preoccupations. If you disagreed, you should have done something differently."

Pops dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. "I told him to protect you. He was not completely inept."

"Such praise!" Sarah mocked him, then repented. "It was so you could take care of the intelligence engine, right? What's it do?"

"I do not know the specifics, but if the Dysons want it then they should not have it. Lie down, it is time for your medical exam."

She complied, a dutiful daughter, and rested her hands at her sides until he loomed over her and nodded that she could move. "Well, Doctor Pops? Anything I should know?"

Pops frowned, but did not take the bait over the childish nickname. "You sustained grave trauma to your abdomen. There is significant internal damage to your liver, gall-bladder and abdominal muscles. Your uterus and intestinal tract are," He hesitated and glanced her over again, "Entirely unaffected."

Sarah crossed her arms over her stomach as though to do so might mitigate some of the damage. "Is John okay?" The name was self-evident; she had never had to stop and ponder what she might name her child, it was foretold from the time she could remember that she would have a son and he would be named John.

Pops nodded, still staring. "From the damage patterns, it appears that the nanos created a protective shield ahead of the impact, protecting your child and exacerbating your injuries at the trauma site."

"I feel fine," Sarah muttered, but pulled up the hem of her shirt to glare at the angry bruise and red mesh imprints. "So John saved himself?"

"It could not have been intentional."

"Why not?

"Because," Pops reasoned with a glacial sort of inevitability, "It would have required detailed knowledge of events that had not yet occurred in this timeline and relied on enormous improbability." He nudged the collar of her shirt aside, touching a rough fingertip to the silvery scar from where John had cut her. "The activity of the microfluids has increased 25-fold." The cloth sprung back into place when he pulled his hand away. "The exponential increase is interfering with my diagnostic capabilities, but there appears to be a minor increase in overall particle density."

"You mean it's started growing." Sarah was not going to panic over this, it would accomplish nothing, but her heart persisted in trying to burst out of her throat. "Is there anything you can do?"

Pops stared at her for several long seconds, inscrutable. "It does not have to be a bad thing," he said at last. "There is a high probability that it saved John Connor's life. It may save yours."

Sarah blew out a long, shuddering breath. "At what cost? Look at what John became: an agent of Skynet. I can't let that happen to either of us." She wrapped her arms over her abdomen again, it was becoming something of a nervous tic. "Pops, I'm scared."

"It will be okay," The mattress sagged as the Guardian sat beside her and pulled her into a carefully planned hug. "Nothing will happen to you while I have the power to prevent it." The sound of running water cut off abruptly and he let her go. "When we get to the new location I will take some biological material from you. It may be that in a controlled environment we can determine what is causing these changes in your ability."

Sarah snorted and wiped her dry eyes. "You make it sound like I have any control over this." She pulled herself together as Kyle emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, wrapping a towel around his hips.

He glanced between the two of them, "Did I miss something?"

The look Kyle gave her, confused and concerned, disarmed Sarah quite thoroughly. "The contamination is getting worse." It was a small victory that her composure didn't crack as she delivered the news.

"Not much worse," Pops countered, "But without concrete data we cannot predict the risks or possible outcomes."

Kyle absorbed the news with relative calm. "Is this something Cyberdyne might have information on?" He dropped beside Sarah on the bed, unknowingly filling the spot Pops had just vacated and wrapped an arm around her waist.

"It is possible," Pops allowed for the possibility without indicating how remote it might be. "Get dressed, Kyle Reese. We should leave soon."


End file.
